


amaretto

by goosewriting



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (additionally: their contract is MUTUAL and CONSENSUAL., AND canon-typical drinking, Alternate Universe - Human, Aziraphale is a Human, Aziraphale is lonely and tired and a lil bit of a dumbass, Crowley is a Contract Demon, Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Fluff and Angst, HAPPY!!!!!!! ENDING!!!!!!!!!!, Happy Ending, Human Aziraphale (Good Omens), Illustrated Fic, M/M, Marriage, Monster Transformation, Podfic Available, a couple minor original characters, and i mean VERY non-graphic, angsty tarot, anyway its meant to be very lighthearted so pls dont read too deep), canon-typical secret keeping, except aziraphale only ever asks crowley to like, go to lunch or whatever, in which a bookseller makes a deal with a demon but the demon is really chill, its tasks in exchange for a soul, the non-graphic loss of one (1) finger, there will be smut, they make a contract with one another and its an accident for both parties but it works out, very minor non-descriptive body horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:55:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24308572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goosewriting/pseuds/goosewriting
Summary: “Demons have laws?” Aziraphale asks, head cocked to the side.“Well, insofar as nature has laws, yes. Is that your final request? Is that what it’ll be?”Aziraphale takes a moment to contemplate this. “Yes.”Crowley nods, then holds the pad of his thumb out to Aziraphale’s mouth. “Lick it,” he commands.“Excuse me?” Aziraphale squeaks. Crowley notes that this is the first time Aziraphale has been outwardly puzzled at literally anything Crowley has done.“In order for a demonic contract to be solidified, there needs to be a mixing of biological matter, and I’m assuming you’re not into bloodletting,” Crowley says, eyes wide. He’s been wrong before.-------Aziraphale, a human, has grown used to being alone.Everything changes for him when a unique occult relic falls into his hands and loops him into a contract with a mild-mannered (if a bit snarky) demon named Crowley.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 319
Kudos: 1772
Collections: Good Omens Human AUs





	1. summons

**Author's Note:**

> AH. HELLO. welcome to my self-indulgent human-contracts-a-demon au! i'm gonna try and keep it 99% pining and fluff, but there's gonna be a little bit of angst ~for color~ hehe. i have a lot of it written and all of it planned, so i should be decently steady with updates. i foresee 8-10 chapters. 
> 
> thank you to arcafira, chubbyhornedequine, and panderams for beta work and cheerleading! thank you to the gomens party house for general enthusiasm over my past months of writing! 
> 
> see y'all on the other side!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale finds an odd book and makes a contract. Crowley falls into something utterly unexpected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every chapter is going to have a song to go with it from [my personal playlist for this fic](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6vX8eAGNWHKzdlB8OU4v9B?si=7GwtVpuKSAOvBFmsvnI3oA) and some lyrics i've chosen from the song that fit the vibe of the chapter! for chapter one, our song is [cinnamon by hayley williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf0zS5d52g8) and our lyrics are:
> 
> _i'm not lonely, babe_  
>  _i am free._
> 
> _(on the walls_   
>  _of my home,_   
>  _there are signs_   
>  _that i'm alone.)_

_FEBRUARY 11, 2019_

After more than twenty years of living and working alone, Aziraphale Zachariah Fell has taken to reading aloud. 

(He’s also taken to being alone, gotten used to the feeling of being lonely. He’s grown to like the way that the dust has settled on the seats he doesn’t occupy and doesn’t bother wondering what it would be like for someone to fill that spot.

He doesn’t _need_ to bother. He reads aloud for himself.)

He reads aloud. If, in partiality, it’s to hear his voice echo off of the bookshop’s walls-- if, in partiality, it’s to fill the space with the illusion of response, then that’s neither here nor there. 

He reads aloud. He reads everything aloud. His shop is one that specializes in the intake, restoration, and reselling of books that he would refer to as ‘well-loved’-- ones that perhaps someone left below a drink while it sweated, leaving a thick ring of water on the cover that eventually flaked away to white. Perhaps they were forgotten, open, on a coffee table with their spine cracked and spread, until the pages struggled to stay stuck in their binding. 

There are many ways to hurt a book, and Aziraphale has seen most every one of them. All kinds of books in all kinds of states of ruin are donated to him. He reads them aloud. 

He thinks the books appreciate it. Books are meant to be read aloud, he’s always thought-- at least most of them are. They’re best appreciated that way, with all their words and cadences properly pronounced. It honors them. It honors their authors. It honors him to be holding them, cradling their cracked spines and water-ruined pages. 

He reads aloud. He reads _everything_ aloud, and he enjoys it.

It’s a Tuesday morning in the South Downs. The clouds roll over the horizon like spectres, quietly heralding a storm. Aziraphale’s bookshop-- A.Z. Fell and Co.-- sits a mile from the coastline, in a small strip of shops. It gets looked over by tourists, but is loved enough by the locals that it easily stays afloat. It’s a dusty old bookshop, but it’s his, and he loves it. 

Aziraphale is gently cutting the leather binding off of the spine of a thick, old history book when the door swings ajar, ushering in a damp wind. The swan-white curls atop his head quiver in the breeze, as if cold, and it cuts off as quickly as it started. 

Aziraphale looks up. “Anathema, dear.” 

Anathema Device, one of the locals as well as a self-proclaimed witch and wearer of jewel tones, bustles into the bookshop with an air of importance and a huge cardboard box. It’s soggy through and through and has some water-ruined text on the side. 

“What have you brought me today?” Aziraphale asks with genuine interest, steepling his fingers and smiling a little. Anathema is, after all these years, more than a local-- she’s become a friend.

“Found these outside the library,” Anathema says, her voice a gentle hum. She sets them on a table, opens the top. “I think they were free to take.” 

“You _think?_ ” Aziraphale asks warily.

Anathema pays him no mind. “I figured you could use some stock. And some of these are _really_ interesting!” She pulls one out, squints at the cover. “I don’t know what this one is called, but--”

“If you can’t tell what the title is, it’s no good, Anathema. I need to know what the book is called or else I can’t restore it, let alone _sell it to someone,”_ Aziraphale fakes annoyance, but there’s affection in his tone. 

“Okay, fine, so maybe a few of these are useless,” she shrugs. She picks a few other books out of the box, throwing them aside. “But some of these-- some of these are _really_ cool, Az.” The next book she pulls out has a worn, black leather cover and a shiny silver lock. “Look-- this one looks _occult-y.”_

“Why don’t you take it, then, o great occultist?” Aziraphale asks, leaning forward on his elbow. 

“I’m not an _occultist,_ I’m a _witch,”_ Anathema corrects, pursing her lips. “Plus, could be nice for you to get some variety in here. I brought these for _you,_ y’know, be more grateful.” 

Aziraphale is thankful for Anathema’s playfulness on this otherwise dreary afternoon. He could generally pick out rays of sun to bask in at lackluster times of day such as this one, but he was having trouble today. “Thank you, Anathema,” he says, as sarcastically as he can manage. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yep!” Anathema says, popping the ‘p’. She smiles, gathering the books she’d thrown aside earlier. “I’m gonna feed these to my worms,” she tells Aziraphale. “The rest are yours.” 

“Alright, dear,” he responds, turning his eyes back to the book he’d been tending to. “Tell the worms I said hello.”

Anathema leaves in a flurry, just as she arrived. The only evidence of her presence is the soggy box of books she left behind. 

For a couple of hours, Aziraphale forgets about the box. He tends to his book until he needs to wait for some glue to dry and he remembers where he is. It’s past closing, he realizes, and he hustles to switch the sign. After that, it’s onto his mental list of tasks for the night. He listens as rain begins to patter on the windows and goes to warm up his tea. 

While he waits for the binding to set, he wanders to the box and begins to pull things out, making stacks to differentiate between books he can restore and ones that are too far gone to make anything presentable out of. 

Eventually, he comes across that black leather book Anathema had pulled out earlier. It’s dustier than he remembers it being-- on the cover, in the glue, between the yellowed pages. It looks as though it’s survived ages of wear and tear, yet it’s held together rather beautifully. There’s very little indication of what it is on the outside, just an odd impression of a snake in the leather, and Aziraphale flips it open to look at what’s inside. 

Inside-- well, he wishes he knew what any of this was. As it turns out, Anathema’s sizing-up of it being _occult_ isn’t far off. A lot of it seems to be written in an ancient language that Aziraphale can’t quite place. Some of it’s in an odd approximation of English. Some of it, even still, is just _symbols--_ sigils, maybe? Aziraphale isn’t sure. He sets the book on the table, flips through the pages, and eventually, he comes to a page that he can _read._ More than read, something he can _understand._

It’s a recipe for chocolate amaretto crêpe cake. 

Specifically, it’s the recipe for the chocolate amaretto crêpe cake they make at The Ritz. It says so right on the page.

Baffled, Aziraphale leans closer and reads it aloud. 

“Place all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor or a blender and process until well-combined. The mix will be the same consistency as heavy cream. Brush a skillet with melted butter and place over medium heat until butter just starts to smoke…” 

He reads through the whole thing. First for the crêpes, then for the chocolate amaretto filling and the ganache. Altogether, it sounds like a great cake, if a bit rich for Aziraphale’s personal tastes. 

Then he looks up from the book and into the eyes of a man. A man who, as far as he’s aware, was not there a couple of seconds prior. 

A man in his locked bookshop, wearing all black and sunglasses, and-- now that Aziraphale’s bespectacled eyes have focused-- emanating a slowly-diffusing red smoke. It was almost as though he had appeared from it. 

Aziraphale blinks. Closes his mouth, which had fallen open, then shuts the book. “Well, you _certainly_ aren’t chocolate amaretto crêpe cake.” 

“Euurrrh, uh, no, I’m Crowley. Why-- how did I get here?” the man-- Crowley-- asks, as though Aziraphale will know any better than he. As he does, he turns to look behind him, above him. Maybe he’d be able to see better if he took off those sunglasses. 

“Well, I’m not sure, dear boy. I’m quite positive I locked the shop. How _did_ you get here?” Aziraphale posits half-sarcastically. 

“Well, I, er-- what’s that, uh, in your hand there?” He points at the book with a black-painted nail. 

“A book,” Aziraphale responds stubbornly. He clutches said book a little tighter with hands that are _quite_ well-manicured, Crowley notices.

Crowley rolls his eyes. “No, I see that. _What_ book?” 

“I’m not sure,” Aziraphale answers. “Just got it in today.” He holds it up to show Crowley the cover, and upon seeing it, Crowley’s mouth purses and his brow crinkles. 

“Well, that _almost_ explains things,” he says, and as if it clarifies anything for Aziraphale at all, he turns his head to the left to show him a small black tattoo by his ear-- one that matches the snake on the cover of the book. 

“It does?” Aziraphale asks. “Because I see little to no explanation at all.” 

“Can I see it?” Crowley asks, and he steps forward. 

“No,” Aziraphale replies very quickly. 

“Why?”

“Because you just _apparated_ into my bookshop at _ten PM_ , I don’t _trust_ you,” Aziraphale scoffs. He’s really quite calm, in spite of the circumstances. 

“But I don’t know how I got here _either,”_ Crowley almost whines, and his head tips backward dramatically, revealing the long line of his throat. Aziraphale thinks that it’s unfair that the man who broke into his shop is attractive. “Listen, I don’t expect you to trust me, but I need you to let me see that book.” 

“If I give it to you, will you leave?” Aziraphale asks. He thinks about the tea he forgot in the microwave earlier. 

“If I’m at all able, yes, I’ll leave,” Crowley levels. “Please. I don’t want to beg.”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes dramatically. “Fine. I’ll save you your dignity.” He drops the heavy book into Crowley’s palm. Crowley flips the cover open and leafs through it, seeming to read it with far more comprehension than Aziraphale had managed. He hums a couple of times, nodding, leaning himself against one of the bookshop’s tables. 

Eventually he comes to the recipe. His face twists. 

He reads to the end and hisses, his lip curling. “Auuugh, _Hastur,”_ he spits, slamming the book shut. “Okay, I know what’s going on, and you aren’t going to like it.” 

“How do you know I won’t like it?” Aziraphale asks, arms crossed. Really, it’s enough that he’s appeared in the shop like this-- he ought to keep his assumptions to himself.

“You just seem like the stuffy religious type, I know you won’t like it,” he justifies. 

Aziraphale has the gall to _laugh._ It’s a singular one, one of disbelief. “Things aren’t always as they seem, dear boy. Hit me.” 

Crowley takes a deep breath, sets the book down, and rubs at one of his eyes below his glasses before speaking. “My-- _coworker--_ embedded my summoning chant into--” he grits his teeth. “A recipe for chocolate amaretto crêpe cake.” He takes another breath, then smooths his hair down. “And you read it, so now I am contractually bound to you until I complete a--” he waves his hand noncommittally-- “a, uh, a mission of your choosing, I suppose. Then I get your soul, yadda yadda.” 

Aziraphale blinks. 

Blinks again. 

“What?” _Summoning. Chant. Contract. Soul. Excuse me?_ “--What… are you?” Aziraphale asks with a furrowed brow.

“Ah,” Crowley hums, then hikes a thumb at himself. “Demon.” 

Aziraphale’s gaze, which was settled on Crowley at some point, is no longer on him. For a few seconds, it focuses somewhere in the middle distance. 

When it comes back to Crowley, Aziraphale’s face lights up in a smile that toes the line between hospitable and forced. “Do you want tea?” 

“Tea?” Crowley asks. He pads after Aziraphale, follows him to his kitchen like a distressed puppy dog. There, Aziraphale puts the kettle on, removes his stewed tea from the microwave, and pours it out. He frowns at the knife he usually uses to stir and, suddenly thinking it improper, throws it in the sink with a clack. 

“Yes, tea,” he finally answers. “Has anyone ever made you tea to settle a contract before?” 

Crowley blinks. “I think not,” he responds. “They don’t usually summon me on accident, though, either.” Truthfully, it’s been _centuries_ since someone properly summoned him, and when they did, well-- it was generally into a sigil or a circle of salt or some other trap. They’d ask him to kill someone, or seduce someone else, and then he’d get their soul, and it was generally unfulfilling work. What can he say?

Aziraphale laughs a little. “Really? First time?” 

The wording makes Crowley blush. _Yes,_ the demon blushes. “Eh-- uh, wh-wh--” 

“Would you like chamomile or earl grey?” Aziraphale asks. “That’s all I have right now, I’m afraid.” 

Crowley stammers. “Guh-- uh, chamomile. You’re human, should you be drinking caffeine this late?”

“Probably not,” Aziraphale smiles. “But I’ll be up all night either way, so I might as well drink what I like, and after the stress of accidentally summoning a demon? I need my creature comforts.”

That’s all the explanation he’s going to give, and somehow Crowley knows it. He slides onto one of the stools next to the oven and leans on it, waiting in silence. Aziraphale’s eyes catch him a couple of times as he brews their teas, then he slides a mug to Crowley. 

“Y’know, you made me tea, but never bothered to ask me if demons _drink_ tea,” Crowley hums, taking a too-hot sip and hissing a little at the heat. 

Aziraphale slides onto the kitchenette’s other stool. There’s no bar-counter, nor a table, so the ‘sitting space’ is just a pair of barstools in front of the kitchen counter. Though-- it had only been one stool the last time Aziraphale was back here, he was sure of it. (Whatever.)

“So,” Aziraphale sips his earl grey. “A contract.” 

“Yeah, uh--” Crowley starts, then his nose crumples up. He goes silent. 

“Aziraphale,” comes Aziraphale’s prompting. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley lows, testing the name out on his tongue. “Contracts are standard demonic practice. Summon a demon, enter a contract with it, get what you want, lose your soul. It’s simple stuff, really.” He scratches his nose, which Aziraphale notices is crooked.

“How specific does the request have to be?” Aziraphale asks. “Like, what can I ask you to do?” 

“Er, it’s all over the board,” Crowley answers with a shrug. “I’ve been asked t’ do all kinds of things. Steal cattle. Kill kings. Start wars-- end them,” he says, numbering things on his fingers as he goes. “It can be as specific as you want, really.”

“But I can ask you to do anything,” Aziraphale responds. The words ask a question that the tone doesn’t. Crowley blinks. 

“Yup,” and he pops the ‘p’. Aziraphale almost starts laughing, thinking of Anathema, but he manages not to. “Anything at all.”

“Alright. I think I know what I want,” comes Aziraphale’s next statement. “Can I ask a couple of questions first?” 

Crowley relaxes further onto the counter, if possible, and takes another gulp of his tea. “Shoot.” 

“Can I see your eyes?” is his first question. 

Behind his sunglasses, Crowley blinks. Of course, Aziraphale can’t see that. “Why would you want to?” 

“I’m not going to make a contract with someone who won’t show me their eyes,” he states mulishly. “It’s not a trustworthy thing, covering your eyes like that. It doesn’t help me like you.” 

“I’m a demon,” Crowley answers, voice rising in pitch. “I’m not meant to be trustworthy-- or, or likeable! And-- and you don’t really have a choice here, you have to make a contract. You summoned me.” He jabs a finger toward Aziraphale in a way that isn’t _hostile_ so much as it’s pinning responsibility upon him.

“That’s a stupid rule,” Aziraphale observes. 

“I don’t make the rules,” Crowley shrugs. 

“Fine. I still want to see your eyes,” Aziraphale demands, holding fast. He crosses his arms. 

“What if I don’t show you?” Crowley asks, taken aback. 

Aziraphale doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he purses his lips tight, raises an eyebrow, and shoots a look at Crowley that says _you will, though, won’t you?_

Having been successfully brought to reckoning, Crowley scoffs and gives in. In a smooth, practiced movement, he removes his sunglasses, revealing-- _oh._ Revealing beautiful, shining, amber-ochre eyes with slitted pupils. Eyes the color of the sun when it filters through the clouds at midday, or of light through the most golden honey, or-- well, ironically, they’re almost the color of spilled Amaretto. Aziraphale forgets to respond for a second. They’re the eyes of a cat, or a snake, or-- or _something,_ but _Christ,_ they’re _gorgeous._

“Do you have any more questions?” Crowley queries, exposed. He doesn’t make eye contact. 

Aziraphale pushes forward. “What, exactly, does it mean that I’d lose my soul?” he asks, and _damn,_ that’s the hard sell. Why’d he have to ask that one?

The demon picks at his lip and rolls his head back. “Euuu, uh,” he groans ambivalently, waffling. “Uh, I’ll fulfill my half of the bargain, and I, er. You… well. You’ll die someday, and when you do, your soul will be claimed for Hell. Easy.” 

“And I’ve no way out of this now, since I’ve already summoned you?” 

Crowley’s lip curls and his nose bunches in distaste. “Yeah, sorry about that one-- I get that you didn’t mean to--”

“Don’t apologize, Crowley, it’s already been done,” Aziraphale says flatly. “I’m just making sure I’ve got it right before we do this.”

“Sure,” Crowley chokes, taken aback. “Okay. No apology, then.” For someone who’s just unceremoniously been told that he’s been trapped in a deal with a devil that _will_ end with him going to Hell, he’s oddly calm. Something about that interests Crowley, he’ll be the first to admit it. He wonders what’s made Aziraphale so indifferent. “Er-- anything else?” 

“Not that I can think of. I’ve already decided, anyway,” Aziraphale hums quietly, worrying at his lip. “What if I just asked you to spend time with me for a while? Can that be your task?” His head tilts, his face unknowingly vulnerable. It makes Crowley’s brow crunch up, all concern concealed as judgment. If he’d looked a little closer, he’d have noticed the absence of any other life in Aziraphale’s bookshop, he just hadn’t looked.

“I-- uh.” _No one’s ever done that before,_ he doesn’t say. _Why would you want me to spend time with you?_ he doesn’t ask. “I suppose that’s… fine. Legal, within demonic law.”

“Demons have laws?” Aziraphale asks, head cocked to the side. 

“Well, insofar as nature has laws, yes. Is that your final request? Is that what it’ll be?”

Aziraphale takes a moment to contemplate this. “Yes.” 

Crowley nods, then holds the pad of his thumb out to Aziraphale’s mouth. “Lick it,” he commands. 

“Excuse me?” Aziraphale squeaks. Crowley notes that this is the first time Aziraphale has been outwardly puzzled at literally _anything_ Crowley has done. 

“In order for the contract to be solidified, there needs to be a mixing of biological matter, and I’m assuming you’re not into bloodletting,” Crowley says, eyes wide. He’s been wrong before.

Aziraphale nods solidly. “You’re correct.” He licks Crowley’s thumb. Crowley takes that thumb and presses it into the palm of his other hand. He then takes his own turn at licking his left thumb (while _not_ thinking about how Aziraphale’s pink tongue had just been pressed to it) and then mixes it with the saliva already in the center of his right palm. 

When he stretches his palm flat between them, the mixture of spit burns a red hole in Crowley’s hand. He doesn’t flinch. The two of them watch as it burns, then morphs, beginning as a wide spiral, then thinning out and slowing until it forms a thin, red, hollow, glowing circle. In the next second, the circle is filled with two other, concentric circles, and speared by five lines that form a star. In the gaps between the star’s spines, small symbols come into being that resemble the ones that had been in the book.

Crowley outstretches his arm for a handshake. “Nice to make a contract with you, Aziraphale,” he grins. 

Aziraphale is back in familiar territory all of a sudden. He reaches out and meets Crowley’s hand with his own, giving it a firm shake. As their hands finish that one movement, a spark of pain shoots up Aziraphale’s arm and he jolts away, hissing, eyes screwed shut. 

When he opens his eyes again to survey the damage, the same circle that sparked and came into being on Crowley’s palm is burned onto his as well. It glows red, then settles to soot-black. 

He looks up to ask a question, but Crowley isn’t there. “Crowley?”

Just as he walks back out to the bookshop’s main room, he feels a tickling sensation on the inside of his right arm.

‘ _call me xoxo,’_ reads the ashen writing that’s appeared along his forearm. ‘ _just tap thrice. - c’_

 _Well._

After more than twenty years of living and working alone, Aziraphale Fell is about to begin sharing his time with a demon. 

Hopefully he doesn’t mind being read to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hee hee hoo hoo. thank you for reading !!! more soon !!! you can come yell at me on twitter or instagram at @goosetooths!
> 
> read a comic of the summoning scene [here,](https://www.instagram.com/p/CAddox1lh_p/) also done by me!


	2. acknowledgement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale comes to terms, Crowley has anxieties, and they get on with things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, y'all! i've been busy, so the chapter 2 comic is taking me ages. for that reason, i decided to go ahead and put the next chapter up in fic form so y'all don't forget about me. 
> 
> thanks as always to chubbyhornedequine for beta-ing and panderams for cheerleading!
> 
> the song for this chapter is [angel, won't you call me? by the decemberists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UENXrkmN-Mc) and our chosen lyrics are: 
> 
> _angel, won’t you call me?_  
>  _could i be the only?_  
>  _though i am a lost cause,_  
>  _angel, won’t you call me?_  
>  _(saw them crown you may queen,_  
>  _heard you sing the sweetest thing.)_

_THE NEXT MORNING_

When Aziraphale awakens and begins going through the motions of his morning routine, all is completely normal. It’s as it should be. For fifteen minutes, he forgets what had transpired the previous night. 

Then, as he’s reaching up to wash his face, he sees-- _it._ The ash-black circle in the center of his right palm, one that forces him to recall the scent of sulphur, of brimstone, the red-smoke fog that chased the silhouette of _him_ , of a _devil_ , of _Crowley._ With an unnatural calm over his entire being, he bends to wash the soap off his hand, then dries it. 

Immediately following, he sinks to sit on the tile of the bathroom floor, his unmarked hand pressed flat to his forehead. 

There he sits, mumbling quietly to himself like a man gone mad. He can hardly believe it actually _happened._ For a blissful few minutes, he forgot about the previous nights’ transpirations, but upon seeing this sigil— there was no denying it. Memories of the night rush back with breathtaking clarity. 

He doesn’t regret making a deal with a demon, or— at least, he doesn’t think he does. Perhaps it’ll be nice. Crowley seemed perfectly pleasant. He doesn’t regret the deal, no, but— perhaps he does regret not asking a couple more questions, like _what’s it like to be tortured in hell for eternity_ and _are you going to to torture me yourself, or is that not so much your bag?_

Aziraphale raises his sigiled hand to look at it, sighing. Ah, well. Nothing to be done for it now. He may as well accept his fate and jump in with two feet, he thinks. 

He takes a look at his pocketwatch— 7 am. Is it impolite to summon a demon before lunch time? He’d rather not find out firsthand whether or not Crowley is the type of not-morning-person to take his rude awakenings with a side of demonic violence. 

No bother— he’ll just wait until later. Once up, brushed, combed and ready, he pads to the kitchen— he figures he ought to eat some breakfast, the thought in mind that maybe having something in his stomach will make him less shaky. However, as he crosses the threshold into his little, dusty kitchen, he sees his single nice pan lying in the sink with the ashy remnants of his past morning’s attempt at pancakes still encrusted on it, and—

—This is how he ends up puttering around, tidying his little kitchen nook, while his breakfast of coffee-with-cream-and-sugar percolates in his ancient coffee maker. He avoids the dishes for as long as possible, wishfully thinking about how nice it would be to _not_ have to do them.

As he putters, he accidentally catches sight of the sigil a few more times. Every _single_ time, he’s caught off guard-- not only is it going to take some getting used to, having a demon to do his bidding (as if _‘his bidding’_ is going to be anything worse than some dusting, really), but it’s going to take a moment for him to grow accustomed to the fresh, black mark on his palm.

After his third time being startled by the presence of the simple demon’s circle, he huffs to himself, grabs his coffee, sugars it, and bustles downstairs to open the bookshop. 

At every reminder of his pact, he’s been brought back to the same question: do demons sleep? Would it be rude to wake Crowley so early? He resolves to wait until the afternoon to summon him either way, just to err on the side of caution, but also thinks it couldn’t hurt to ask. 

Once he approaches his desk and puts his coffee down, he picks up a pen and poises it over his left wrist. 

At 7:27 am Earth time, Crowley is making his way from the Boiling Pit to the Sulphurous Field when he feels his arm tingle. 

Upon raising it to see what’s going on, trying to angle it so that the message is visible in the light of the Molten Cavern, he sees three words in hastily-scrawled black pen. _Are you awake?_ Perfect grammar, beautiful cursive, and it takes a moment for him to remember what’s going on at all. 

Oh— yes. He contracted a human yesterday. He’d nearly forgotten, but as he looks upon the message, there’s no avoiding the truth. As a demon, he tries to avoid the truth as a whole, but the truths in contracting are highly non-negotiable and completely not-dodgeable. He’s contracted now. 

He doesn’t regret entering a contract, he doesn’t think, but it’s been a couple millennia since he’s done it. He wishes he’d had the foresight to ask some questions, like _are you an incorrigible dick_ and _will you make this Hell on earth for me? Because, honestly, I’m a bit tired._

Ah, well. Not as though he’d have been able to get out of it anyway. He can’t dwell on it. Plus, Aziraphale didn’t seem to be too horrifying of a person. He’d know, he’s seen all manner of horrifying people down here in Hell, and frankly, he’s sick of every one of them. He pulls a pen out of the aether and writes back. 

_im always awake_ , Crowley scribbles in his scratchy handwriting. 

_You don’t sleep?_ Aziraphale asks in polite response. 

_im not even sure if i can tbh,_ Crowley answers. 

There’s a distinct lack of response for a moment. Then, _Can I summon you any time, then?_

 _u can do whatever u like,_ the demon writes back. 

Another, longer hesitation, and then he responds: _Oh, very well_. 

Crowley continues on his previous path, sort-of waiting for more, sort-of assuming he’s about to be summoned anyway. Neither happens. 

He begins to wonder if Aziraphale contacted him just to ask a question, but he arrives at the Screaming Basin before his train of thought can get far. At this point in his long, long life, he knows that there’s generally not much you can think of at the Screaming Basin other than the screaming, so he doesn’t even try.

—

Aziraphale had already set himself on not summoning Crowley until at _least_ noon, and he’s not great at changing his plans, so he decides not to. He goes about his business: he double-checks new stock, prices a couple of outliers, and opens his shop. By the time that it’s eleven, a few people have wandered in and out while out on errands-- a few to say hi, a couple to buy a long-awaited book, and a few more loose tourists who have nothing better to do. 

It feels _normal,_ which is what bothers Aziraphale. Nothing’s really _normal_ anymore, is it? He found out yesterday that demons exist, that you can make _pacts_ with them, and that… they aren’t necessarily all horns and spikes and fire. They’re not even necessarily scary, he assumes. Everything that’s implied by the mere existence of a demon such as Crowley challenges every infernally-oriented theological idea that Aziraphale has encountered over the years. 

It bothers him, sort of. Not to madness, but it bothers him. He’s sitting at his desk, his foot bobbing in time with the Tchaikovsky record he’s got playing, as he scribbles away at his ledgers. All day, he’s felt an-- an _itch_ in the back of the back of his head. He’s done his damnedest to ignore it, attributing it just to new knowledge and the nonsensicalness of it all, but eventually the itch gets to be _too much,_ and he can’t just sit there anymore. He _can’t._

As he paces his shop, up and down the isles, menially straightening the perfectly-straight books on his shelves, he feels the itch get _worse._

It gets so bad, for one gleaming moment, that he has to squint his eyes against the tickle of it-- against a new, insistent pressure. When he opens his eyes fully again and allows the room to focus, one thing stands out in his vision: the black, leather-bound book that brought Crowley to him in the first place. 

He finds himself inexplicably drawn to it. It somehow contrasts its surroundings with blinding intensity, as if sketched in a darker, softer pencil than the rest of Aziraphale’s world. Unable to think otherwise, Aziraphale picks it up, and its leather is just as soft on his palms as it was the night before. 

With painstaking carefulness (as though rough movements would offset even more demons from its pages), Aziraphale totes the book over to his desk, setting it down and opening it. At first, he decides he’s looking for the recipe that summoned Crowley before. 

He doesn’t have to open the book more than a page to understand that this time is _different._ Something about the ash-circle on his hand permits him to see _more._ It’s not that the writing has changed, no, it’s that Aziraphale can _understand it._ What was no more than unearthly runes and symbols to him yesterday has become… a narrative. Not just any narrative, either-- _Crowley’s_ narrative. 

What’s more baffling is that as he reads it, he realizes that this narrative— it begins in _four-thousand-and-four B.C.._ It speaks of a snake, and an apple, and—

Aziraphale slams the book shut. As he does, he re-registers the snake on the cover of it.

Was Crowley…? No. There’s no way. It can’t be possible that the human-looking, roughtalking demon he’s got a contract with was _The Serpent of Eden._

Although— all things considered, perhaps that wouldn’t be so wild. (He thinks of those yellow-yellow eyes.) 

Either way, he keeps the book shut, choosing to throw it in a drawer to be thought about later. It decidedly overwhelms him, and he is not easily overwhelmed. 

With the book contained and the itch scratched, his other cognitive senses tell him to take a lunch break, so he does. When he’s back, the _12:15_ that he reads on his antique clock reminds him that he told himself he’d summon Crowley at noon. 

He sets his to-go coffee down, leans against his desk, and steels himself with a breath. Then, as he’d been bidden, he taps thrice on the sigil on his palm. 

Almost like when Aziraphale originally summoned Crowley, in one moment he’s not there, and in the next, he is. Aziraphale blinks, and in the second that his eyes are shut, the demon appears in a puff of red smoke and is present from that point on. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. 

“Hm?” responds Crowley, looking as surprised to be summoned as, perhaps, someone who is regularly summoned _shouldn’t_ be. 

“I just…” 

“You weren’t quite expecting that to work, were you?” Crowley asks, and it would be patronizing from anyone else, but he seems painfully genuine. 

“To be honest, I thought it would take a bit longer. I haven’t had time to make you tea,” Aziraphale hums, looking at his own to-go cup of coffee and fiddling with his hands. Crowley can’t tell if he’s lying. 

“Well— I’m here,” Crowley prompts. “What would you like?” 

Aziraphale perks up immediately. “Ah, oh, yes. Good afternoon, dear, how was your morning?” 

Rather than be taken aback by the lack of commands or tasks or what have you, Crowley decides to take this in stride after only a moment’s hesitation. He physically dips his head back and forth as if deciding between two options with which to answer, making some Unsure Crowley Sounds as he does. “Well— no morning in Hell. Generally it’s just Fire Time, or Screaming Moment, or....” he gestures with his hand as if to say, _there’s more, but… eh._

Aziraphale blinks. “Mm. Alright, uh— how was your… Fire Time?”

Crowley shrugs, leaning himself against a table coolly. “Just alright, if I’m being honest. Never been a Fire-Time-person, myself.” 

The quirk of Aziraphale’s head accompanies his storing-away of this information. “Fair enough, dear boy. I… do you want something to drink? Coffee? Tea?” 

Crowley makes a low, questioning sound. “You’re offering?” Aziraphale nods in a confused affirmative. “Ah— then I’ll take, uh. Just a black coffee.”

Aziraphale, quite pleased, smiles at Crowley and moves from his perch at his desk to bustle over to the bookshop’s kitchenette-- the same one they forged their contract in, Crowley notes. As he enters, Aziraphale beckons to Crowley. “Make yourself comfortable, dear. Remember our Arrangement.” The capital A is inferred. 

Suddenly aware of his standing around, Crowley makes for the seating area in the back room. He doesn’t sit, rather, he hovers near the armrest of one of the overstuffed chairs, where he can see Aziraphale through the doorframe. He isn’t sure what to do with himself without concrete commands such as _Kill The Traitors To Our Kingdom_ and _Make Sure The Cult Is Extinct Within The Day._ Those things give him _structure_ when it comes to contracting. What’s he supposed to do?

Meanwhile, in the kitchenette, Aziraphale picks through an assortment of novelty mugs, finally settling on one and pouring Crowley a mug of hot, semi-fresh coffee. He lingers for a moment, wondering idly if he should bring some sugar for Crowley anyway, but he figures the demon knows his own preferences well enough. He comes out of the kitchen with two mugs in-hand, nothing more.

“Sit down, Crowley, you’re stiff as anything. Here.” Aziraphale hands Crowley a mug of coffee, then makes for a particularly well-loved armchair with his own coffee (once in a paper to-go cup, transferred to a mug of its own) in-hand. Bidden to Aziraphale’s command, Crowley sits on the loveseat, his coffee clutched in his pale hands. He looks at the cup, which proudly declares _Yes, I Drink Pens and Pencils._

Aziraphale, significantly more comfortable now but still quite stiff regardless, sips his coffee. “Now, can I ask a question? I must admit, I’m dreadfully curious.” 

“Mm,” Crowley hums in affirmative as he takes a swig. Then, after he swallows: “shoot.” 

“What’s Hell like? I’ve been thinking about it, and— well, I was already wondering, but I figured if my soul is to be _damned_ there, I’d like to know… the climate, shall we say. I mean, I assume since I’m now bound by demonic law that I’ll be sent there eventually, but correct me if I’m wrong.” Throughout this entire spiel, he is perfectly pleasant. If a being such as, say, a cat were to listen to him say this, and could not understand his words but could parse his _tone,_ it might guess he’s talking about— well. Any number of more sunny-sided topics, really. Rainbows. Books. Puppies. 

Crowley is altogether astonished by this. His face crinkles up. “Satan alive, Aziraphale, how morbid! It’s our first day!” 

Aziraphale, lips pursed, looks at a point on the ceiling. He didn’t think it was such an outrageous question. “Well— I was simply _thinking, and—“_

“Think about something better, then! I don’t want to talk about Hell, not on our first day,” Crowley insists. 

“Very well. What would you rather, then?” Aziraphale asks primly, taking another drink of his coffee. He moves his pinky (which wears a golden signet ring that glints in the low light) and it draws his eye to what his mug says: _Mondays Aren’t A Fan Of Me, Either_. Crowley adds it to his mental tally of odd mugs and blinks.

With the blink comes a call back to reality. Crowley shifts on the couch, his leg hopping restlessly. “Literally anything,” he answers. 

Aziraphale hums. His eye tracks up to the architecture of the ceiling, then down to his mug, where his finger taps the rim. Crowley isn’t quite aware of the fact that he’s, perhaps, checking Aziraphale out-- he’s inspecting him in full, in the dim backroom light, from his well-worn tan oxfords to his wispy blonde curls. As Aziraphale looks into his mug, the tuck of his chin causes a little roll of fat to make itself known, and Crowley registers it-- how much he finds it aesthetically pleasing and soft, like the rest of Aziraphale-- in the same moment that he snaps out of his ogling and realizes Aziraphale is struggling to find something to talk about. 

“Uh— how did you find my book?” Crowley asks, trying to alleviate Aziraphale’s anxiety but not quite knowing why he’s so desperate to do so. His lack of self-awareness could be called a fault.

“Oh,” Aziraphale squeaks. “Uh— my friend brought it in. She found it with some other books outside the library. Since I restore books she figured she’d drop them off here.” 

“Someone just left it somewhere?” Crowley asks. 

“Well, I assume so. I’m not actually sure how it got where it got,” Aziraphale shrugs. 

“Right, yeah, of course,” Crowley mumbles, taking another swig of his coffee. “Makes sense. Why would you?” 

Unsure of what to say next, they lapse into an odd silence. Crowley becomes hyper-aware of his leg’s restless bouncing, but is unable to stop it. After a few moments, Aziraphale drinks a bit of his coffee and levels his gaze on him, more than a bit concerned but allowing none of it to show in his features. “Are you anxious, Crowley?” 

“No, why would you think that?” Crowley asks anxiously. 

“You haven’t stopped shaking since you sat down,” Aziraphale notes, nodding at Crowley’s leg. “What reason do you have to be anxious? I’m the one in the company of a demon.” 

Aziraphale has a point. Crowley makes a few noncommittal sounds and sets his coffee down, willing his leg to quit it. “I— er. ‘M not used to this. Usually I get, ah. Ordered around more. Not used to just talking.” 

“Ah,” Aziraphale murmurs, the corners of his lips turning upward. He gets up from his armchair and wanders from the backroom, coffee still clutched in his hand. “Follow me then, dear boy.” As the endearment passes his lips, he isn’t sure how it slipped out, but he can’t very well take it back now, can he?

After setting his coffee atop the cluttered oak desk in the main room, Aziraphale leads Crowley to an empty shelf and a cart burgeoning with a multitude of books. A closer look reveals that some of the books are old and worn with time and others are shiny and new, outfitted with brand new leather covers that look to be hand-embossed. Crowley picks up a copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ bound in green leather. “What’s all this?” 

“If you prefer to be given things to do to be comfortable, then we can reshelve these,” Aziraphale suggests, picking up a stack of books. “They need to be re-alphabetized and reshelved in order-- oh, and catalogued accordingly. I’ve been working on reorganizing the shop’s inventory recently, but I seem to have lost my steam… maybe you can help me get back on track.” Aziraphale places the stack back down with a _thomp,_ then folds his hands on his belly, smiling. He looks like a kindly professor. There’s something huggable about him. (Crowley kind of wants to. Hug him, that is. But demons aren’t afforded that kind of warmth.)

“Ah, alright,” Crowley responds, placing his coffee on a nearby table in order to shuffle through the books for a closer look. “I can do that.” 

“Wonderful,” Aziraphale grins. Crowley expects him to wander away, to tend to other things, but instead he sidles up next to Crowley and begins to dig through the pile as well. 

“What are you doing?” Crowley queries, leaning away from Aziraphale as if mere contact with his demonic form would burn him through his layers of tartan and velvet. 

“I’m not going to leave you to do it alone, dear boy. I did say ‘we’,” he states, completely sure. “I just figured-- if you’re wary of inactive conversation, we could talk while we work instead.” 

Crowley is at a loss for a moment. He’d all but forgotten the terms of their contract-- _spend time with me._ He’s so used to taking care of things for others that he’d forgotten that this contract didn’t require him to. “Of course,” Crowley says dazedly, scooting over to permit Aziraphale more room by the cart. “What do you want to talk about?” 

“Well, I already--”

“We aren’t talking about Hell. I’m drawing that line now, Aziraphale,” Crowley asserts, holding a hand up to quiet him. “I’m not going to cater to your gruesome curiosity yet.” 

When he looks over to Aziraphale for reaction, he only catches a look, a sure and mischievous smile that tells him that this bastard _will_ have his curiosity catered to, one way or another, no matter how _gruesome_ it may seem. 

Before they can begin to actually talk, Aziraphale briefs Crowley on the system he’s using to organize his books. He fetches a ledger for reference and Crowley finds himself utterly charmed by the look of half moon glasses perched on Aziraphale’s nose. Once thoroughly briefed, they settle into companionable silence in order to organize the books by Aziraphale’s modus operandi. Aziraphale puts a record on at a reasonable volume (an honest, unironic _record_ in the year 2019, yes, and a classical one at that) and hums along to it quietly as he inventories books and settles them in neat piles, ready for shelving. 

Eventually, they fall into an easy synchronicity. Aziraphale catalogues the books in his ledger, then hands them off to Crowley for alphabetizing and shelving. Every now and then, Crowley chooses to linger on one of the titles he’s handed, his absentminded wondering about the types of books Aziraphale stocks turning into a conscious browsing. Every time that Aziraphale catches Crowley inspecting one of the books he’s handed, something in his chest seems to _tug._

They stock and chatter for a while, finding commonalities despite everything. Crowley insists he isn’t much of a reader, but he recognizes a lot of the books that pass his hand. “I’ve been around quite a while,” he says as justification. “You see lots of things when you’ve been around as long as me.” 

“Is it insensitive to ask how long?” Aziraphale asks, certainly _not_ thinking of that black-leatherbound tome in his desk drawer. “Is it like asking a lady’s age?” There’s a twinkle in his eye that Crowley has only seen once or twice, but damn, he thinks he might like it.

“Insensitive?” Crowley snorts. “I’m a demon. Insensitive is supposed to be my whole thing.” 

“Is it?”

“Is it what?” 

“Well-- is it your whole thing, or is it just _supposed_ to be?” Aziraphale clarifies as he hands him a copy of _Sense and Sensibility_. 

“Uh-- er,” Crowley stammers. “I’m not sure I know how to answer that.” 

“You don’t have to know how,” Aziraphale answers, and the playful glint in his eye brightens. “You just have to answer.” 

Crowley scoffs with equal parts disbelief and amusement. “You’re a right bastard, you know that?” 

“So I’ve been told,” Aziraphale responds, preening. 

They fall back into their pattern again, Crowley chuckling, Aziraphale pleased. Their conversation is unremarkable until Aziraphale passes a restored copy of a first edition Dickens’ _Great Expectations_ into his hands. 

As Crowley shelves it, a card falls from its pages. He picks it up, inspects the golden embossed text on the front. _A.Z. Fell and Co. Booksellers. Owner, Aziraphale Fell._ It has a number, an address. It must have fallen in between the binding when Aziraphale was tidying his desk, or was otherwise lost or thrown aside. Perhaps he was using it as a bookmark, even. It’s the first time Crowley has seen Aziraphale’s name in print, and his brow furrows. “S’nice name,” he says, cadence clear.

Aziraphale just turns his head to look at him, mouth pursed and eyes caught on the card in Crowley’s hand. He huffs, snatches the card back, and looks away after a second, turning his focus back to his cataloguing and tucking the card in a pocket. “I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t make fun.” 

Crowley’s eyes widen behind his glasses. “I’m not!”

“Oh, please,” Aziraphale scoffs. “I’ve had the name for all fifty-odd years of my life. At this point I know when people are making fun of it.” 

“Or maybe you’re just assuming the worst,” Crowley counters. “It really is a nice name. Bit of a mouthful, but that’s besides.”

Aziraphale pins him with a blinding blue stare for a moment, silently surveying Crowley’s face and eventually finding him trustworthy. Then he laughs, just a bit, without much humor. “It’s funny you think so. It’s the name of an angel.”

Crowley matches his single, humorless laugh. “Ha! That’s sort of ironic, huh?” 

Aziraphale snickers. “Quite,” he says, the corners of his mouth curled up, just a bit. With the way the light breaks the window and limns him in white and gold and motes of dust, for a moment, Crowley has the thought that the name fits him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank y'all!! more soon :') come yell at me on twitter or instagram at @goosetooths!
> 
> you can read the chapter 2 comic [here](https://www.instagram.com/p/CDhYrm-FX6P/)! also-- i drew up a new cover banner, which you can view [here](https://www.instagram.com/p/CDj2FAzFQdz/)!


	3. motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some time passes. Aziraphale grows used to some things and Crowley develops something unexpected. 
> 
> A few helpings of something fluffy, and-- what's this?-- the larger plot gets, perhaps, teased at!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, howdy! here's another chapter! i apologize that i take so long between postings, i'm just involved in about a million things right now and i'm an extraordinarily slow writer. i promise that i'm still out here working on amaretto, though, it's just slow going!
> 
> if you want to get amaretto updates faster, i post new chapters [on my patreon](https://patreon.com/goosetooths) nearly as soon as they're done! there's also a patron discord where we yell about amaretto things fairly often, if that's something you're interested in!
> 
> ALSO-- amaretto has a podfic now! the FANTASTIC arcafira is podficcing chapters as they come out, which is absolutely something that's making me cry every time i remember it! (in a good way, i promise!)
> 
> huge thanks to arcafira and chubbyhornedequine for betaing and panderams for cheerleading! new thanks to raspberry and grace ALSO for betaing!
> 
> this chapter's theme song is [fall with me by the wild reeds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVUG8SrVg2A):
> 
> _staying up ‘til half past two,_   
>  _lying there across the room,_   
>  _i’m going crazy without you now;_   
>  _we can talk about something strange,_   
>  _we both know it’s part of the game,_   
>  _and it’s so hazy at this hour._

_APPROXIMATELY ONE MONTH LATER - MARCH 2019_

Aziraphale Zachariah Fell is getting used to sharing his time. 

At first, he didn’t think it entirely possible, but it’s been a month since he began summoning Crowley on the daily, and odd enough-- he _enjoys_ having him around. He usually only summons him on weekdays during business hours, but the other day he caught himself wondering if he could summon him some other time without it being weird. He thinks maybe he’d like to have him around just to watch television in the evenings with. Perhaps that he’d like to take him to dinner, or a show, or out to the beach. 

_(No--_ not in that way. Or... maybe in that way. It depends on if demons can be domestic, or go on dates, or if Crowley would be so inclined as to do so with him. He isn’t actually sure if Crowley _goes_ on dates, but he’s learned in the past month that Crowley isn’t really like other demons. Other demons sound _horrifying,_ frankly, but Crowley is… human, almost, by demonic standards. So whether demons date and whether _Crowley_ dates may not be correlated.)

One can hardly blame him for getting attached. It’s rare that he finds himself within the orbit of a person for more than a few hours at a time, let alone days or weeks. He has friends, sure, but they come and go. They aren’t daily fixtures. He’s— he’s used to being alone, but that doesn’t mean he prefers it; actually, he’s coming to realize that maybe he plainly doesn’t. 

(Or maybe he just prefers Crowley’s company. He’s easy to be around; agreeable, if a bit anxious and snarky, and his demonhood is inconsequential. He helps Aziraphale around the shop without complaint. His banter is always worth encouraging and he’s knowledgeable, intelligent, not to mention _handsome_ , and, well—) 

There are a few times, as February turns to March, that Aziraphale considers writing him a message through his skin while they’re not together. Just to-- just to continue their conversation from that day, or to ask him a question, or to distract him from the parts of Hell he doesn’t like. He hasn’t done it yet, but he’s caught himself twirling his pen in hand with the thought in mind more than once.

He always catches himself in time to remind himself that Crowley is business hours only. 

During today’s business hours, Aziraphale nearly forgets to summon Crowley at their normal time-- an agreeable 10:30 am, an hour or so after the shop usually opens-- because an old, snobbish book collector friend of his had shown up with a box of fire-damaged tomes that he told Aziraphale he could keep upon restoration, seemingly uncaring as to which of his books had been charred. His friend didn’t seem to realize what he was giving up, though, because what Aziraphale is fretting over when he finally remembers to summon Crowley is a 1600s reprint of Pliny the Elder’s _Historia Naturalis Astronomia._

Crowley’s summoning on this rainy March day goes like this: Aziraphale glances at the clock at 10:47. He curses aloud with more force than is strictly necessary, slams his chair back, and taps thrice on his sigil. Then Crowley is there. “Ah, I thought you’d forgotten,” he says with a charming lilt, but Aziraphale can nearly sense the edge of something else. 

“No, dear boy, simply distracted,” Aziraphale croons as he moves to sit back over the book. “I couldn’t forget.” 

Aziraphale doesn’t look up after he speaks, and thus doesn’t see the blush coloring Crowley’s cheeks at the slipped statement. _I couldn’t forget._ Crowley does his best not to lock that up with the other Aziraphale-related things he finds himself repeating in his head like a mantra. 

“What’s got you so distracted, angel?” It’s Aziraphale’s turn to blush-- the endearment, while not exactly _new_ , still happens to catch him off guard. 

“Oh-- ah. A friend of mine-- though _friend_ is perhaps a generous word-- he brought me a box of ruined books, and this-- this was among them.” He offers the _Historia Naturalis_ up for Crowley’s perusal, and Crowley bends at the hip to look at the book with a critical eye. 

“Pliny, huh?” Crowley hums. “I remember him.” Without further explanation, he starts flipping the pages gingerly, peering first at the inner text and then toward the front page, scanning for something in particular. His finger catches on a specific cluster of letters. “Holland, 1601. This is a lucky find, Aziraphale.” 

“Isn’t it?” he agrees with an almost-mischievous grin. “I’m quite thrilled. I’m afraid that I may not be able to restore it to its full splendor, but ah, isn’t it beautiful? I’m happy to have it either way.” 

“I could restore it,” Crowley says before he even knows what he’s offering. 

Aziraphale’s gaze snaps to him and scans his face for a sign that he’s joking. When he finds nothing, he barks a laugh. “You don’t know the first thing about book restoration, dear boy. Last week you asked me if my awl was a weapon.” 

Crowley scoffs. “Not _that_ way, angel.” He rolls his eyes. “I could miracle it. I saw copies of it when it was first reprinted. I’m sure I remember it correctly. I could just snap, and--” He snaps, as though in example. “It’d be good as new.” He hopes that Aziraphale doesn’t question why he, a being that professes he doesn’t read, would be so well-versed in this obscure book about astronomy.

For a moment, Aziraphale is silent, his eyes wide and lips parted. Crowley nearly takes back his offer, fearful that he misstepped, but then Aziraphale speaks. “You could do that?” 

Crowley nods curtly. “A little demonic magic and it’ll be good as new.” 

Aziraphale, nearly spellbound by the offer, moves to hand the book off, then suddenly snaps it back to his chest. His brows push together. “Will I get extra damnation if I agree to this?” he asks. 

“What?” 

“Are you-- is this a temptation, or something like that? Are you--” 

“Aziraphale, you’re already damned. You can’t get _more_ damned. I’m just doing you a favor, nothing more,” he says oh-so-convincingly, which neatly covers up his slight disgruntlement at the idea that he’d slight Aziraphale somehow. (Sure, he’s a demon, but he doesn’t necessarily like reminding.)

“Oh,” Aziraphale murmurs, feeling a bit stupid. However, as the momentary fear vacates his system, he finds himself painfully excited again. “Would you really?” he asks, a hopeful shine to his eye. 

Crowley refrains from saying that he’d do nearly anything for Aziraphale at this point. “Of course.” 

( _A month is too fast to get attached, Crowley_ , the rational part of his brain reminds him, _too fast to say you’d do anything for him.)_

_(I didn’t say it, now, did I?_ Crowley thinks back acidically.) 

Buffeted by Crowley’s easy answer, Aziraphale offers the book up to him, hardly concealing his excitement and, if he’s being honest, his intrigue. He hasn’t exactly seen Crowley use his powers yet, besides whatever little trick he’s using to add cream and sugar to his own coffee after Aziraphale hands it off to him. He leans in as Crowley takes the tome from his hand in order to watch a miracle (if it could be called that) at work. 

Crowley holds the book in one hand and brings the other one up parallel to it. Without so much as another breath, he snaps his free hand. In the time that it takes Aziraphale to blink, what used to be a fire-ruined book goes up in a puff of red smoke, replaced by a pristine replication of its 1601 self. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathes, for lack of other words. Crowley hands him the brand-new-old book and looks at it with no small amount of satisfaction. “It’s-- I mean, I wouldn’t know, but it’s-- it seems perfect.” 

With the utmost respect, Aziraphale lays the book on his desk on its flat spine, allowing the two hard book-board covers to fall to the surface of it, then letting the pages fall until it’s open to its center so as not to hurt the binding. Once open, he can hardly keep his hands off it. He flips the pages, looking at them in complete awe. He inspects the printed illustrations, raised on the page as if new, his mouth slightly agape. 

“Why,” he hums reverently, ever-so gently caressing a line of text with the tip of his finger, “thank you, Crowley.” 

Crowley had been watching, his heart (or what passes for one) brimming with pride at a job well done, but he was scared out of it at being acknowledged. “Oh-- ah, it’s nothing, angel,” he stutters, his chest clenching. _You sop,_ he chastises himself mentally. _You don’t get to feel love in the way your name sounds in his mouth. You don’t get to bask in his gratitude. That’s not something you’re allowed to have._

But the way that Aziraphale looks at him with a small smile, looks at the book, startles, and says, “oh, I ought to be wearing gloves,” warms whatever passes for his heart anyway. 

_THE BEGINNING OF APRIL 2019_

It’s been two months since their contract began, and Crowley has inadvertently picked a favorite couch in Aziraphale’s shop. 

There are quite a few places in the shop to sit: old, overstuffed armchairs, loveseats with divots where people have gotten comfortable with a book and decided to stay, and couches with thin, wooden armrests and too many fluffy pillows. Out of all of them, though, there’s one specific couch that Crowley has decided he loves. 

It’s off to the side of the shop, near the poetry section. It’s long and faded and vintage, with a horrible bronze-and-gold damask pattern and wooden inlay and metal studs that Crowley finds aesthetically atrocious. However, he’s tested every single sitting space in this shop, and this couch is by far the most comfortable. It has the added benefit of not smelling _completely_ like dust, which is a pro and a con for him at this point-- the smell of dust is intrinsically not-great, but it’s also intrinsically _Aziraphale,_ so his heart and mind are at war re: dust smell. 

(Other benefits include being in the sun for much of the day and being within sight range of Aziraphale’s desk _and_ the back room door. The latter benefits are ones he’s loath to admit to, and thus he has not even acknowledged them privately.) 

All in all, he’s decided that this couch is His couch. 

This is the couch that he’s on when, on an overcast day early in April, Aziraphale meanders out from the back room with two coffees, hands one to Crowley (creamed and sugared, much to Crowley’s outward chagrin and inward delight), keeps one for himself, and _lingers._ Generally, Aziraphale tends to keep to himself until he thinks of something he’d like Crowley’s help with, at which point he’ll call to him. He’s not often one to _linger,_ especially if he wants something from Crowley-- but the nervous way that he’s picking at the loose veneer of his mug tells Crowley that he doesn’t _want_ something, but rather that he’s got a _question._

“Out with it, angel,” Crowley lows, taking a sip of his coffee. It’s too hot, but he’s a demon, so it doesn’t dare burn his tongue in any meaningful way. 

Aziraphale’s eyes shutter and he fixes his gaze on Crowley. Rather than forcibly deny himself his curiosity for the sake of his dignity, he takes a breath and asks, “Can you leave the shop?” 

The instantaneousness with which Crowley’s facial expression changes from gentle interest to complete affront is admirable. He makes to get up off the couch. “If you wanted me to get out, there are much more elegant ways of asking.”

Aziraphale all but pushes him back down. “No, that’s not what I mean, my dear,” he huffs, his tone dancing on the edge of haughty. “I _mean,_ if I wanted you to go somewhere-- er-- somewhere _with me_ , could you do that, or are you… _bound_ to this shop somehow?” 

This takes Crowley a moment to process. “Oh, you mean… okay. Yeah, I can leave the shop. ‘S hardly my fault you only ever summon me here.” 

“Quite right,” Aziraphale clips, nodding and looking away. He takes a sip from his coffee in lieu of continuing, and Crowley raises an eyebrow at him wordlessly. Aziraphale shuffles on his feet. Crowley continues saying nothing, because as much as he’s taken a shine to this human, he’s still a demon, and awkward silence is one of the most effective forms of torture. Old habits die hard. 

Eventually, Aziraphale works up the nerve to speak again. “There’s a new restaurant in town opening tonight,” he says on an exhale, a blush working up on his cheeks. “Customarily, I’d ask Anathema to go with me, but she’s out of town with her aunt, and I’d rather not go alone, if I’m honest.” 

Again, Crowley takes a few seconds to understand the meaning of Aziraphale’s questionless question. “You want me to go with you?” 

“I’m sure it’s not standard or-- or very _demonic_ \-- to go with someone to a restaurant opening, and I understand if you’d rather not,” Aziraphale says then, beginning to backpedal. He was so _hopeful_ , but he doesn’t want to force Crowley into anything. “I just-- I would enjoy your company, and I thought--”

“I’ll go with you, yeah,” Crowley hums, nodding and taking a drink of his coffee. He leans further into the couch in an effort to look more casual but his posture ends up looking more forced than ever. 

“Will you really?” Aziraphale asks, his face breaking into a blinding smile and his heart’s rhythm picking up despite itself. 

“Yeah, don’t think about it. Tonight, you said?” Crowley says in what he hopes is a nonchalant way.

“Yes-- tonight. The opening begins at five but I was going to go over at six-thirty.”

“Sounds good to me,” Crowley shrugs. Aziraphale smiles again, kicking himself mentally, then turns to walk away, when something hits him--

“Wait,” he says suddenly, turning back to Crowley. “Can demons eat?” 

A thousand answers, ranging anywhere from sarcastic to soppy to as straightforward as possible, flash through Crowley’s mind. What comes out of his mouth is, “eh-- err, well, you’ll have to find out, won’t you?” 

Aziraphale is taken aback by this. Does Crowley even _know_ if he can eat? What kind of answer was that? Not a convincing one. “Fair enough, I suppose,” he lilts airily, walking away.

It’s only as Aziraphale sits down at his desk that Crowley pulls back and looks at the mug he’s holding, which proudly announces, _silly boys! dirt bikes are for girls!_

_THE END OF APRIL 2019_

By the end of April, they’ve gone out together five times. Crowley can remember all of them in painstaking detail. So can Aziraphale. The reason for this is the same for both of them: they’re both a bit infatuated with one another, and when you’re infatuated with someone, you don’t forget. 

The night of the Fifth Dinner (as both of them separately call it within their own minds, capitals and all), something is different. 

For the four dinners preceding the Fifth Dinner, the night ended at the bookshop’s doors. For lack of anything more to do or any further excuses to spend time in each other’s company, Aziraphale would unlock the shop door, waffle on whether or not to ask Crowley in for a drink, and have the decision made for him when, feeling awkward and fidgety, Crowley would bid him goodnight and disappear back to Hell with a single thought. 

Aziraphale would _love_ to work up the gall just to-- to ask him inside. He had such nerve when he asked him to dinner those weeks ago, and look how well it worked out for him! They’d done it more than once, and Crowley seemed to actually enjoy himself, contrary to Aziraphale’s fears! _Bugger it,_ Aziraphale wants to say, _I’ll just ask him!_

It’s not as easy as that, though. Aziraphale, despite having contracted a demon, is not brave enough to ask that demon to do things. Well, he can ask him to tidy the ledger or reshelve some books-- or he can _ask him to dinner,_ apparently, but this is different. What if Aziraphale asks him and he doesn’t actually want to, but he can’t say no? He certainly doesn’t want to force Crowley into something unpleasant. Something he’d rather not be doing. Something like… spending more time with Aziraphale. 

For that reason, it takes him until the Fifth Dinner to ask. 

For the Fifth Dinner, they went to the same restaurant they went to for the first. A new place in the Downs; a little fusion restaurant that, for all intents and purposes, Aziraphale had rather expected to be horrible. However, it had surprised him by being distinctly _not horrible_. Thus, when he’d mindlessly complained of being hungry on this very day, Crowley had suggested that they go back to the aforementioned fusion restaurant, and Aziraphale had jumped at the opportunity. 

Now, they’re walking home from said fusion restaurant, both blissfully tipsy and both quite enjoying one another’s company. Their conversation has fallen away in favor of companionable silence. 

Aziraphale is walking the edge of the sidewalk, his glances casting between the sharp profile of Crowley’s face and the faraway line of the oceanic horizon. The way that it curves into cliffs at the edges is like a heartbeat, he thinks in his muddly-drunk mind. Up, dip, flat-flat-flat, up, dip, up--

(He wonders if Crowley has a heartbeat. He’s never gotten close enough to know.) 

Crowley is watching Aziraphale look out at the horizon and is feeling, while certainly drunker, much more grounded in reality than his companion. They pass under a dim streetlight, one that’s just kicked on, signaled by the setting of the sun under clouds heavy with rain. The shadows it casts on Aziraphale’s face change the very shape of him. He’s still so handsome, though, Crowley thinks. 

He also thinks, as he looks at Aziraphale, that everything about him is a contrast to Crowley himself-- the sharp, jagged rock face of Crowley’s silhouette looks prepared to leave deep cuts on the soft surface of one’s skin. Deep, bleeding things, things that don’t heal right. Things that leave scars. 

Aziraphale, he’s different-- he’s all rolling waves, all gentle curves, all salt-slick, healing waters. 

As they leave one streetlight behind and pass beneath another one, Crowley wonders if he might ever get to feel those waters. He wonders if he could heal. 

(Aziraphale is still floating, still wondering if Crowley’s heart beats blood through his veins in the same way his own does.) 

The bookseller turns his eyes back to Crowley’s face again, irises bright and bloomed. As he opens his mouth to speak, they both feel the first drops of rain on their skin at the same time. Crowley makes a choking sound. Aziraphale chirps. 

“Oh, well--” Aziraphale tuts, as though trying to scold the clouds themselves. “We’d best hurry.” 

He picks up his pace. For two fleeting seconds, his hand reaches out for Crowley’s, then it doesn’t. He pulls it back into line, disguises it in a sway. As the rain picks up, they start to move faster, darting under awnings until they reach the front of the bookshop. At this point the drizzle has turned into a full rain and is threatening to quickly melt into a storm if they aren’t careful. 

Aziraphale, who is drunk and wet and fumbling with his keys, casts a glance at Crowley. Crowley, who is just as wet as him, with eyes just as wide and a mouth that’s parted just slightly on a breath. 

(He breathes, in, out. Both of them do.)

A thick roll of thunder peals in the sky and they both jump. Deciding to swallow his fear, Aziraphale clicks the lock and opens the door, nodding for Crowley to follow as he pushes inside. He throws his wet jacket over one of the couches and sloughs his shoes off next to the coat rack, then turns to Crowley, who hasn’t moved past the threshold. 

This is the part where he _really_ has to be brave. “Crowley, would you-- would you like to stay for another drink?” 

Crowley, for his part, had been prepared to tap out, quite literally-- he’d had his hand poised over his sigil, about to leave-- when Aziraphale had nodded him in. After all, he didn’t want to invade on what was probably going to be an otherwise peaceful, rainy night. He didn’t want to, y’know, _demon up_ whatever lovely nightly rituals Aziraphale was about to go through the motions of. 

But then-- _would you like to stay for another drink._ Would he? Of course. Should he? Probably not. But when has he ever done what he should? Serpent of Eden and all-- he’s meant to set a bad example. 

“Er, nn-- sure,” he says, only mostly stunned. Both the question and his own answer catch him off guard. Part of him is still catching up, even when he saunters with Aziraphale into the back room and watches Aziraphale retrieve a bottle of Chateneuf du Pape. 

An hour later, the storm outside is properly raging and, after a particularly rousing conversation about how best to prepare oysters, Crowley catches Aziraphale staring at the front windows. The rain is beating off of them in sheets, shedding off to join the flood below. They’re both pleasantly drunk, buzzing and loose. 

“I’ve never liked storms,” Crowley comments, thinking of The Flood. 

Aziraphale only looks at him for a second. Just a moment, his expression wide and wonderous, and Crowley instantly realizes that was the wrong thing to say. “Really?” Aziraphale hums. “I’ve always loved them.” 

Crowley takes a drink of his wine, wondering if he’s got enough that he could feasibly drown himself before the foot in his mouth suffocates him. He needs God to grant him a quick death-- but no, that would be too merciful. 

Thankfully, Aziraphale keeps talking after another moment of reflection. “I’ve always thought they were-- I don’t know. Cleansing. When I was small my aunt told me that it was how the world healed itself. That we’d never have green grass without lightning-- or, or rainbows without rain. She said there was wonder in it all.” Aziraphale quiets again after that, looking into his glass for a moment. “Oh, look at me-- babbling about storms, and you don’t even like them. I’m sorry, Crowley, I--” 

“No, it’s-- it’s fine, Aziraphale,” Crowley interrupts him. A roulette wheel of things to say spins in his head, flashing colors and lights, and when it lands on something, he doesn’t hesitate to speak. “I like listening to you talk,” he murmurs, and feels a distinctly foot-shaped blockage in his mouth again. With all the alcohol, it didn’t occur to him to think that through. He curses inaudibly into his glass, looking away as he takes another drink. 

When he glances up again, Aziraphale is looking at him with his mouth slightly open, eyes filled with an emotion Crowley can’t place, something he doesn’t think he’s ever seen fixed on him before. “What?” Crowley asks, brow knitted.

A small smile tugs at Aziraphale’s lips for a second and he quashes it just as fast. The rain rushes on, rattling the windows. “Nothing, dear boy,” he says, well-manicured finger toying with the rim of his empty glass. 

Lightning flashes and it reflects in Aziraphale’s eyes. A moment passes between them where neither of them speaks. Aziraphale steals one, _two_ glances at Crowley, his teeth pulling at his lip, and the demon can tell he’s chewing something over in his mind. 

By the time the thunder follows the lightning, Aziraphale has made his decision. The very ground shakes beneath him, but Aziraphale does not pay it mind, thinking of other things, of bigger things, more important things. Thinking of Crowley. Of what this means. 

(Is it the contract, or does he mean it?) 

He’s decided to believe in something bigger than that. Something more hopeful.

He rises from his seat. 

“Another drink, dear?” 

  
  


_MAY 2019_

In May, Crowley learns how to sleep.

Being a demon and all, Aziraphale thought he would have figured it out sooner. “It’s the practice of sloth,” he says, “isn’t that a base requirement for you? Why haven’t you tried it?” 

“I’d just never really thought to, to be honest,” Crowley shrugs, sipping from a mug that declares _Wench_ below a portrait of a pristine, uncategorizable old-timey woman. “I don’t have to, so I figured there was no reason.”

“But it’s _nice,”_ Aziraphale counters. “I mean-- truthfully, I’m quite bad at it, but--” 

“What?” Crowley interrupts. “How can you be _bad_ at _sleeping_ ? Don’t you just”--he gestures with his hand, which Aziraphale understands to mean _lie down_ \--“and… sleep?” 

Aziraphale leans back on his armchair and wrings his hands. “Well, yes, but there’s a percentage of humans that are inflicted with this horrible thing called _insomnia,_ ” Aziraphale hums. “It’s rather frustrating, really, I can never sleep when I’d like to.” He leaves off the bit about how, on more than one occasion, he’s been tempted to summon Crowley in the wee hours when he’s stalking his house sleeplessly, but then what would he say? _Ah, I don’t need your help with anything, I’m just lonely. Any chance you want to listen to me rant about Shakespeare?_ No. Crowley likely doesn’t need that. 

“That’s stupid,” Crowley snorts. “Isn’t sleep one of your primary functions, as a human?” 

“Well, it’s supposed to be!” Aziraphale says huffily. “Not one of mine, obviously.” 

“ _Obviously,”_ Crowley lilts. Two months ago, Aziraphale would have thought Crowley to be mocking him, but now he’s aware that that’s just one of his quirks. “So, what is it about sleeping, then? Why do you think it’s _nice?”_ He pronounces the four-letter word like it tastes bad in his mouth. 

Aziraphale huffs again and settles further into his posture. Crowley spreads his arms across the back of His Couch and leans in, appearing, for all intents and purposes, completely ready to listen to whatever Aziraphale has to say. 

“Well, it tends to leave you feeling better than you did when you started,” Aziraphale starts, his eyes tracking the ceiling. “More rested. And, well, for me, sleeping helps me feel less anxious. I tend to be more paranoid when I’ve not slept.” 

“Is that why you’re the way you are? Always asking questions.” 

If Aziraphale were holding something, he’d throw it at Crowley. As it is, his hands are empty, so he wrings them tighter, plays with his pinky ring a bit. “No,” he bites back, affronted. “I’m just inquisitive by nature.” 

“Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?” Crowley asks with a grin, obviously messing with him. 

“Oh, quiet, you wily thing,” Aziraphale huffs, withholding what was promising to be a rather dazzling grin. As it is, it just plays at the corners of his mouth. “But you really ought to try it sometime. I bet you’d like it, with how much you laze around this place.” 

Crowley folds his arms behind his head, his shirt yanking out of his too-tight pants and riding up his hip. Aziraphale pointedly _does not_ look. “Perhaps you’re right, angel. Maybe I’ll give it a shot.” 

A few days after their initial discussion about sleeping, Aziraphale decides to face something head-on, rather than continue to dance around it. It’s one of the things he finds most pleasurable in this world, and something he rarely finds that he can comfortably do with others. In fact, he can’t remember the last time he’s asked someone else to partake with him. It’s something he finds rather daunting, really, but he’s gotten rather comfortable with Crowley in the past couple of months, and thus he decides he’ll just bite the bullet and ask him if he can do it while he’s around rather than continue not to do it at all, even if he ends up a little embarrassed in the process. 

He knows, logically, he shouldn’t be so scared to ask. The worst he’ll get is some good-natured fun-making, which he’s fine with, all in all. There’s something he finds a bit daunting about it, though, and by the time he’s decided he’ll ask, he’s worked himself up into quite the panic. When he summons Crowley, he’s pacing the back room, pressing half moons into the flesh of his palms with his fingernails. 

“Aziraphale?” Crowley says in lieu of a greeting as soon as he sees the furrow of his brow.  
  
“Can I read aloud?” Aziraphale blurts. “While you’re here, I mean. Or to you. Either way. I-- I like to read my books aloud, but I’m not sure if you’re okay with it or-- or if you’ll think it’s annoying, and I don’t want to bother, you see, so I thought I’d ask, but I’ve really worked myself up about it and now I’m scared that you’re going to say no.” 

Crowley blinks. “Why would I say no?” 

Aziraphale looks down at the floor, still worrying at his hands. “I’m not sure. I think I’m just anxious for nothing.” In all honesty, a few people who’d been around for his reading-aloud in the past had thought it maddening and asked him to stop, so it’s become something of a guilty pleasure for him. Though now that Crowley asks, he’s not sure his anxiety is entirely rational.

“...Yeah,” Crowley relinquishes. He’s decided over the past few months that his goal is to make Aziraphale as at-ease as possible at all times. “You definitely are. You can do whatever you’d like.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale hums. “I’ll get the tea, then.”

Fifteen minutes later, Aziraphale cozies himself into his armchair with a copy of _Paradise Lost_ he’s recently rebound in a gorgeous sienna leather. Crowley flops into position on the couch that’s catty-corner to Aziraphale’s chair, his tea cradled against his chest and his leg thrown heedlessly over the back. “Whenever you’re ready, angel,” he says, and Aziraphale can’t tell if his eyes are open or shut, what with the glasses. 

“Alright, dear,” Aziraphale responds, and he begins, ever so gently, to read.

It hardly takes a half hour for the combination of Aziraphale’s voice, the warmth of the tea, and the softness of the cushions to lull Crowley into his very first-ever sleep. Aziraphale isn’t aware that he’s unconscious until he releases a truly legendary snore and Aziraphale has to jump out of his seat in order to catch Crowley’s tea before it falls from his unconscious grip and onto the rug below. 

Aziraphale has to stop himself a few seconds into watching Crowley peacefully snooze on the couch in order to go do other things, lest he accidentally trip and fall and close the shop and spend the entirety of his afternoon sleeping in the back room with Crowley. 

(Well, not _with_ Crowley, more like _near_ Crowley, because-- well. You understand.) 

The bookseller toddles off into the shop, puts a good, tame Pachelbel on the record player, and goes about other daily activities. It’s an hour into said activities-- cleaning up, setting binding on book projects, and such-- that an earth-shatteringly loud crack, a clatter, and a bang is heard from the vicinity of the back room. Aziraphale just about rips a chunk of pages out of the _Mrs. Dalloway_ he’d been restitching when it sounds out, echoing through the bookshop like the roar of the Rapture. 

As fast as he can, Aziraphale rushes to the back room, expecting any number of bewildering things to be waiting for him. What he finds is Crowley, still perfectly asleep, with his wings-- _his wings, huge, black, lithe, sturdy midnight-feathered things, with subtle dapplings of silver like stars during twilight, streaks of red near the tips that match his hair--_ all spread through the room. The source of the noise seems to have been a rather large bookcase that Crowley not only knocked over, but split clear in half with one of his wings. The clatter was the sound of the books flying everywhere in response to the sudden intrusion. The following sigh was from Aziraphale, realizing he has a huge, _huge_ mess on his hands, the least of which is the winged demon currently knocked out on his couch.

Before he can even begin to reckon with that mess, though, he finds himself… looking at Crowley. Never before has he had an opportunity to look at him, unashamed-- to fully and truly study his features: the bend of his nose, the crook of his mouth, the tangle of his limbs, the star-speckling of his freckles, and the copper shine of his hair-- so he takes advantage, but only for a moment. Aziraphale allows himself to mentally wax poetic for approximately two minutes before he forces himself to focus on what he needs to be doing. 

Crowley jostles from sleep easily enough. He’d never slept before, and thus was unaware of whether he could be categorized as a ‘heavy’ or a ‘light’ sleeper. Frankly, he’s still not sure. He blinks the sleep from his eyes with a bleary moan, registering a sense of freedom and the feeling of two hands planted firmly on his arms, shaking him ever-so gently.

He cracks his eyes open. They adjust to the light as filtered through his sunglasses. “Mm-- ‘Zziraphale?” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says in a feather-light tone. “You broke my bookshelf.” 

“M’wha? Yer’shelf?” the demon gargles. 

“Your wing broke my bookshelf, Crowley, I’m going to kill you.” It’s already a wonder his customers aren’t asking him about the goth who’s hanging around his shop all the time now, but he can find an explanation for that if he needs to-- if a single one of them were to see Crowley like this through the archway into the back room, he’d not be able to explain it away. ‘ _Who’s the birdman in your back room?’ ‘Oh, just a winged creature from Hell, dearie, buy your Wilde and be on your way.’_ That absolutely wouldn’t fly, no pun intended.

“Y’couldn’t kill me,” Crowley grogs, rubbing at an eye under his glasses. 

Aziraphale scoffs and rolls his eyes. His hands tighten on Crowley’s arms, and he mildly urges Crowley upward and off the couch. It works, but barely. “Perhaps not, dear boy, but the sentiment stands. Come on, you can sleep in my bed where the customers won’t see you. Your wings can be out up there.” 

“In your bed?” It’s both the first clear statement Crowley manages to give and the spark that brings him to life like Frankenstein’s monster. Aziraphale’s hands help him up from the couch, where he barely manages not to break another bookshelf with the sheer amount of windmilling he’s doing in order to gain his balance. 

“Come on, dear,” Aziraphale says soothingly, hauling the demon’s arm up and over his shoulder. He’s holding Crowley up like he weighs nothing, and isn’t that something? Crowley tries valiantly not to commit that to memory and fails. “Up these stairs over here, that’s it.” 

For all the time that Crowley’s been with Aziraphale, he’s never been upstairs. He wasn’t even fully aware that Aziraphale lives up there, really, not until now. But as Aziraphale half-carries him over the threshold, into a warm flat, and over to a cozy master bedroom, he thinks that even in his half-asleep state, he’s going to end up with the whole place accidentally committed to memory. 

(Or, at the very least, the _smell_ of it. It’s like Aziraphale’s sweet, threadbare, earthy scent, but _everywhere._ Oh, _Satan._ _Shit. Fuck.)_

Aziraphale helps him into his own bed ( _and_ _isn’t that a thought?_ _No, shut up, shut up.)_ with very little effort. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says quietly, barely not perching on the side of the mattress where Crowley’s legs are pushing into the sheets. Crowley stretches his wings and then tucks them around himself, and Aziraphale watches curiously. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” 

“I’m a grown demon,” Crowley yawns, his head sinking into Aziraphale’s over-plush pillows. “I c’n take care’a myself.” 

“Sure you can, dear boy,” Aziraphale hums condescendingly, and Crowley doesn’t have enough energy to dispute it. “Sleep well.” 

_JUNE 2019_

In the past few months, Crowley has learned quite a few things about Aziraphale. 

One, he’s a snob over food. Two, he’s an even bigger snob over wine. Three, he loves tartan to a fault. Four, he’s got an odd amount of experience with anything and everything, and not much phases him. Crowley tries not to think about the things that he may have experience in that are slightly more debaucherous than bookbinding and food criticism. 

He’s also learned about Aziraphale’s family, his past-- he’s mostly hesitant to speak of it, but from what Crowley has gleaned, Aziraphale didn’t necessarily have the best of childhoods, though he wouldn’t have said so at the time. He grew up in the care of his Aunt Elisheva after the deaths of his parents. She was a gentle, careworn woman who taught him to love all things and not to fear for the sake of fear. He divulged to Crowley that he moved out to the Downs after her death because they took trips there when he was small to stay with her friend, one who had a cottage on the point over the water. She was the person who taught him to love books with reverence. She was the person who taught him to see the world with wonder. 

Crowley pretends that his listening to Aziraphale talk about his past-- or himself, in any length of detail-- is all for the sake of their contract. The emphasis should fall on _pretends._

In the past few months, Crowley has also learned a lot of things about himself, like that he likes the way that the light shines on pale eyelashes, and he enjoys sleep, and he’s very good at listening to someone talking about nothing or something or everything for hours and actually _enjoying_ himself (or is that just with Aziraphale?), and he may _also_ like tartan to a fault. (Not on himself, Satan, _never_ on himself, but-- the point stands.) 

He’s also learned, among those other things about both himself and this human he finds himself attached to, that Aziraphale has always, always, always wanted to dine at the Ritz, but has never had the chance. 

“You’ve wanted to for _how_ long?” Crowley asks, leaning over their table at a restaurant called _The Downsman_ in a town between London and the Downs called _Crawley,_ which Aziraphale thought was quite funny. Crowley swipes a chip from their shared basket and pops it in his mouth. He doesn’t quite notice how Aziraphale watches him for a moment before speaking. 

Aziraphale smiles, leaning over the table as far as can be polite. “Since fifth form!” he answers, a wide smile on his face. “We were on a day trip to London, and I saw it, and I’d heard of it before, of course, but-- seeing it was something else _entirely!_ I’ve wanted to go ever since that day.” 

“Fifth form?” Crowley says. “How many years ago would that be for you? A hundred?”

“Oh, quiet! You’re one to talk, mister _I’m six-thousand-years-old, I-know-better-than-you!_ You’re not allowed to comment on my age!” Aziraphale asserts in his defense. It’s all in the name of playful bickering, though, and they both know that by now. 

They both know a lot of things by now.

It’s been five months since Aziraphale summoned Crowley and contracted him on a sludgy night in February. In justifying what he’s now certain he feels about Aziraphale, Crowley thinks idly about that study from the eighties-- nineties?-- that says you can fall in love with anyone in four minutes. He was interested at the time, never having experienced love, and it stuck with him. He used to think it was bullshit-- four months, maybe, or four weeks, that’s more justifiable. 

Now he’s not sure. He thinks maybe he started loving Aziraphale before they even made their contract. The next five months were additional, with every moment reshelving books in Aziraphale’s bookshop and every nap on his couches and every dinner and every after-hours drink and every reading session having been just another factor that drove Crowley deeper into love. 

Every time he doesn’t think he has any farther to sink, Aziraphale flashes him a smile, and his ears pop as he falls further, as the pressure squeezes the air from his lungs. Of course, he’s a demon, so his lungs are purely incidental-- ornamental, perhaps, as is his heart, his stomach. The point stands. 

He’s drowning a bit, but he finds he doesn’t mind it. Not at all. He thinks it’s a sweet way to go, if anything.

Crowley has never loved before. He’s six-thousand-and-something years old, but never has love or anything akin to it crossed his path. He’s definitely _thought_ he was in love, _thought_ he was being loved, but _fuck,_ it’s nothing compared to the real thing. 

He loves Aziraphale, and something inside him (though he’s not sure what that Something is) makes him think Aziraphale loves him too. He wonders if Aziraphale is aware of it-- of his own love, or of Crowley’s. Regardless, there’s _something_ there. 

Currently, as he sits at the table in _The Downsman_ with Aziraphale across from him, he’s trying desperately to ignore the flagrant problems with this. Such as: 

  * He is a demon. (Demons live a very long time.)
  * Aziraphale is a human. (Humans tend not to live as long as demons do, historically.)



Aziraphale, for his part, is not only aware that he’s in love with the demon he’s contracted, but has relinquished himself to pining for the rest of his days-- and to the idea that Crowley may never be able to love him back. He realized it was love at the same time he realized he was fine with Crowley staying around whenever he’d liked, a sentiment that Aziraphale could not apply to many-- if any-- other people in his life. 

That’s all that he’d say of his feelings on the matter at present. 

After their dinner, Aziraphale invites Crowley in for a drink, as has become usual since the Fifth Dinner, much to both of their secret delight. Crowley comes in, has three glasses of wine, listens to Aziraphale rant about Wilde for two hours, and stumbles through the halls of Hell later with a few thoughts whirring in his mind. 

He wonders how long he has with Aziraphale. Ten years? Twenty? How much longer will he live-- how long will his human life permit Crowley to spend time with him? How long will their contract permit it? _‘Spend time with me for a while’--_ he wonders how long a while is. He wonders what he could do to make Aziraphale happy. If being with him makes Aziraphale happy. 

He wonders if he could miracle a table at the Ritz to be empty with a thought. 

He wonders even more intensely if he could then miracle it so that said table would be reserved for two under the name _Crowley._

(He supposes he’s about to find out.)

_LATER THAT WEEK_

After his night with Aziraphale in Crawley and his drunken wanderings through the catacombs of Hell, Crowley thinks about everything again with a clearer mind. In his clarity, he comes to realize he made one mistake when he made this pact. One can blame it on any number of factors, but he _clearly_ made a mistake. 

He thinks about it late at night, when he’s off doing things outside of the shop. He thinks about it _hard._ He’s decided it can be blamed on the clear blue of Aziraphale’s eyes, on the pink of his tongue as it swept over his lip. Crowley was captivated by him, and he made a mistake. 

His mistake? ‘A while’. 

When he and Aziraphale made their pact, Aziraphale said ‘a while.’ ‘Spend time with me for _a while._ ’ _A while_ is great and unspecific. It can be anywhere from a pair of hours to a pair of decades. There’s no clear end. He should have stopped them and asked _exactly_ how long Aziraphale wanted to spend time together, but he _didn’t._

‘A while’ is very, very subjective. A while for Crowley is _centuries._ A while for Aziraphale may be a fraction of such. Crowley should have asked what he meant by _a while._

However-- how much of a mistake it was is also very, very subjective. 

The subjectiveness of ‘a while,’ to Crowley, is not a mistake. To Crowley, it’s a blessing. An _allowance._ It’s unspecific, which means that Crowley can take his damned time. He can let Aziraphale live-- for a while, anyway.

However, he isn’t sure that Hell is so supportive of something as indefinite as _a while._ It’s been a minute, but somewhere in the depths of his brain, he can remember there being— something. A constraint, or a rule. Something to keep things like _a while_ from happening. Something to quantify it. 

That thread of thought is what leads him here, to a grimy door in a corridor of Hell that’s frequented only by a _very_ specific type of demon. A specific _career,_ he should say. 

After taking a steeling (but altogether unnecessary) breath, he lifts his fist up to the sweaty, frosted glass window on the door of _Basmuuth, Law Consult and Scrivener_ and knocks thrice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for reading, i love you! come yell at me on instagram or twitter at @goosetooths!


	4. ex parte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale seeks the help of a witch. Crowley ventures below. Both end up with, perhaps, more information than they bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're back! up until now, i've been trying to keep the fic in step with the comic, but trying to do both at the same time as well as Life Stuff is taking me... way too long. so here's a chapter now instead! 
> 
> this chapter contains: snooping! Crowley being a shit in the past! an introduction to a new character! there is also: MENTIONS OF DEATH and some CANON-TYPICAL SECRET KEEPING. tread carefully! ALSO: big beta thanks to the usual crew, and extra thanks to arcafira for being so incredibly wonderful and helpful!
> 
> this chapter's song is [graveyard by halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgaYeq9NvI). absolutely do not come after me. the song isn't a perfect fit, but i like it, and some of the lyrics feel right. they are:
> 
> _'cause i keep digging myself down deeper,_  
>  _i won't stop 'til i get where you are;_  
>  _i'll keep running when both my feet hurt,_  
>  _i won't stop 'til i get where you are._

_THAT SAME WEEK_

The following Thursday, Aziraphale meets Anathema for tea. 

There are very few places in the South Downs to get good tea. There are plenty of places where you can get _tea,_ yes, even more where you could get _a drink._ Aziraphale will say it once, and he’ll say it a million times: there are very few places in the South Downs to get _good_ tea. 

_Madame Tracy’s_ has _good_ tea. 

Yes, the atmosphere leaves a bit to be desired, what with its mismatched decor, its exposed brick walls, and its overlapping antique rugs that have been, on more than one occasion, the cause of stumbling footfalls. Yes, the middle of the cashier’s counter is taken up by an enormous crystal ball on which the owner writes the daily specials. Yes, the coffee comes with a free tarot reading. Where Aziraphale used to find confusion in the various quirks of _Madame Tracy’s_ , he now finds a certain sense of _home away from home._

He and Anathema meet here for tea regularly. He was a little early today, having decided that all the pacing he was doing in his own home wasn’t good for him. (He’s not used to disliking when it’s quiet.) When he arrived, the owner of _Madame Tracy’s_ \-- a woman around his age (which is to say, ambiguously middle-aged) named Marjorie Potts-- welcomed him in, as she always does, and started making his regular order. 

(Aziraphale has known Marjorie for as long as he’s been here. _Madame Tracy’s_ has been standing under her careful jurisdiction far longer, long before he ever arrived in the Downs. Her past is shrouded in an air of mystery and experience, but Aziraphale is vaguely aware that she used to be both a courtesan and a medium. He’ll never, ever forget when he came through her doors more than twenty years back, looking for a cup of chamomile and a distraction from his own thoughts of self-sabotage. His business had just opened, had just seen its first rent payment, and he had panicked. He’d wondered if his decision to move out here was the wrong one, wondered if he could take it back, if he _should_. Marjorie had brewed his tea, placed her deck in his hand for shuffling, and watched as he drew the Ten of Cups out of her seventy-eight, which was themed with medieval cats at the time. 

“The Ten of Cups alludes to an eventual inner happiness,” she’d said in her calm lilt as she snapped a lid on his to-go cup. “Fulfillment. A sense of peace as your wishes come to fruition.” It was almost nothing in the grand scheme of things, this interaction, but as Aziraphale had sipped his tea and pulled his jacket tighter to his body on the way back to his shop, he’d felt his soul settle a little bit. 

He’d come in to thank her a week later. “Oh, I’ve been thinking of you, dear,” she’d hummed. “You like books, yeah?” An understatement. She’d handed him a mug, a glazed ceramic thing that said _I Like Big Books And I Cannot Lie._ He’d blinked, thanked her, and left after further polite conversation. 

It was the first mug of many, and the beginning of what would become a beautiful and uncomplicated friendship.) 

Today, this Thursday, Aziraphale pulled a Two of Pentacles. “For balance and adapting to change,” Marjorie said with a red-lipped smile. “Remember to bring your cup back when you’re done, that’s a love.” 

Now, he sits with Anathema at their usual windowside round-table-with-mismatched-chairs. Aziraphale’s hands are clasped around his mug, and if he’s a little quieter than usual, Anathema more than makes up for the slack he leaves. 

Mid-conversation, he finds himself completely zoned out for a while, his mind elsewhere. That is, until he hears Anathema say, “...and the last few times I’ve tried to come into your shop, there’s been a guy there-- the same guy-- you know who I’m talking about, Aziraphale, he’s got red hair, painfully pale-- too pale, if you ask me-- who is that guy?” Aziraphale can’t remember what they were talking about previously-- he thinks it might have been the correct way to make a tuna salad?-- but they certainly aren’t talking about that _now._

Aziraphale blinks out of his daydreaming-- which may or may not have involved the same red hair Anathema mentioned-- and holds a hand up to slow her. “Anathema, dear, slow down. What are you talking about?” 

Anathema’s gaze zeroes in on his hand, and that’s when he realizes which hand he held up. “What the _hell_ is that?” she asks, eyes huge and wide and locked on his palm. 

Aziraphale flips his hand and looks at it as if he could _possibly_ forget what’s on the other side. “Ah, uh-- eh, well-- _uh_ \--” 

“Did you get a tattoo?” Anathema asks, bewildered. Aziraphale is many things, but he is not the type to get a tattoo. (At least— not since he was twenty-two and acting on impulse, fuelled by the petty words of a would-be lover who’d said he wasn’t _spontaneous enough._ It’s not as though it’s in a place where Anathema’d have seen it, though.) 

“No! No, I--” Aziraphale stammers. 

“Then what’s _that?”_ Anathema asks again, pointing this time. Her coffin-shaped nails in a deep forest green only intensify the accusational nature of the gesture. 

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Aziraphale huffs, drawing his hand to his chest as if injured. 

“Oh? Who’s to say I wouldn’t believe you, Aziraphale? I’ve heard some wild stories, you realize, like that time that--” 

“ _I’vecontractedademon_ ,” Aziraphale says, all in a rush, interrupting Anathema entirely. 

Anathema freezes. “You _what?”_

“I’ve contracted a demon,” he repeats after a moment. 

Anathema blinks once, twice. “Aziraphale,” she says, eyes still wide as saucers. “Demons aren’t real.” 

Aziraphale’s gaze is fixed squarely on the tea in front of him. “Oh, I assure you that they are, my dear girl, and I have contracted one, and he’s handsome and kind and I can say with complete certainty that I am infatuated with him.” He can't say _in love_. Not now. Not yet.

When Aziraphale draws his eyes up to look at Anathema shyly, wanting to gauge her reaction, her jaw is dropped gently and her hands are clutching her coffee like a lifeline. 

“Come again?” she says dryly after a moment of silence. 

Aziraphale, with no small amount of effort, sets about explaining everything to her. Her expression starts somewhere around complete and utter dubiety, takes a detour to bewilderment, stutters into concern, and eventually begins to settle into a wisened embrace of the bizarre. Marjorie wanders in and out of the room the whole time, very unsubtly listening in. Before Anathema’s features can express true acceptance of the wild and inevitable, though, her brain seems to catch on a detail. 

“Wait-- so you’ve got an entire book of his history, and you’ve not read it?” Anathema questions, leaning forward over the table, the coffee in her hands having gone cold. 

Aziraphale blushes, sipping his own too-chilly tea. “Well-- I. I don’t wish to snoop.” 

“--Snoop? It’s not snooping, Aziraphale, he’s-- he’s a _demon!_ It’s not snooping if you’re ensuring your safety _,_ ” Anathema reasons, her brow pinched. 

Aziraphale clenches and unclenches one of his fists, looking out the window. Something seems to drop out of him-- his breath leaves his lungs and his shoulders drop. “Dear girl,” he starts, his voice having taken on a tone often utilized by wise, older figures that find themselves needing to be stern with younger pupils. However, it leaves him in a gust as soon as he wills it up and out of his mouth. “I… Well, to be quite frank, I’m a bit frightened of what I’ll find in there. Crowley-- while being only the best of gentlemen to me, I can assure you-- he’s… he’s alluded to perhaps having not been the most civilized being in the past,” he admits. “I’d rather remain shrouded in blissful ignorance, if it’s all the same.”

Anathema gives a wordless look of incredulity. “It’s _not_ all the same, Aziraphale! Are you telling me that this-- your-- that your _demon boyfriend_ could be a _murderer”_ \--Aziraphale cringes at _boyfriend_ more than he cringes at _murderer,_ it should be said--“and you aren’t even a little bit moved to find out before, say, committing your _literal soul to him?”_

The snort that leaves Aziraphale is much too jovial for the circumstances. “I fear it’s a bit late for that, dear,” he laughs, but there’s no spark in it. “The contract is sealed. It doesn’t matter what he’s done in his past, there’s no undoing it,” he huffs, looking into his mug of tea, then adds, “--just as well as there’s no undoing of this contract and no use trying.”

The handle on Aziraphale’s mug is quite suddenly the epicenter of Aziraphale’s physical anxiety. He worries at it with three fingers, feeling the flesh-warmed rigidity of it. He releases a breath as solid and flinty as the ceramic said mug is made of. 

Anathema’s hand comes across the gap between them and stills his anxious fingers. “Don’t you think you deserve to know more about him?” 

Aziraphale _doesn’t_ quite think he deserves that. He’s not owed anything. 

Anathema seems to think otherwise. 

This is how they end up back at the bookshop. Aziraphale, under pressure, gives in to the thrall he’s only submitted to once before as he lifts the book out of the drawer he threw it in several months prior and opens the cover. 

(No sooner does it hit the table than Anathema is scolding him for failing to mention that _she herself_ accidentally gave this book to him all those months ago. He cowers under the force of her admonishing words, looking instead at the book’s title page, which reads, ‘ _The History of the Demon_ _Crawly_ _Crowley, 4004 B.C. to Present,'_ in scrawled ink.)

Never before has Aziraphale been especially good at standing up to Anathema when she gets a fevered whim, and this time is no different. As soon as she’s done castigating him for his omission, she huffs. “Well? Let’s see what it says!” comes her prompting as she gently shakes his shoulder. Obediently, he flips to the first page.

_In the beginning, there was a fruit-bearing tree, there was a serpent, and there was God._ Aziraphale scans the sentence. He’s read this sentence before, and the few that follow it, before their implications got too heavy for him— akin somehow to a branch overburdened with fruit, low-hanging, vulnerable— and he had to stop. 

To him, they read like English, or some odd approximation. To Anathema--

“This is just a bunch of gibberish!” she squawks, her hands gesturing wildly in nonplussed aggravation. “I thought you said this book contains his entire history! It’s not even written in a known language-- it’s just symbols!”

Aziraphale holds up one finger to her. “I can read it,” he says simply, letting his eyes drop back to the page silently. Anathema just stands there, bent over the desk with her mouth agape.

“Say more, right now! You can’t just tell me _that_ and then decide you’re done!” 

Aziraphale lets his finger fall to the sentence directly after _In The Beginning._ “ _The Great Serpent, Crawly, said unto the humans of the Garden: Why would God put this great tree right here if you weren’t meant to sssavor its sssucculent fruit? If She_ really _didn’t want you to eat of it, Ssshe’d put it on the moon, amirite?”_ he reads.

This does nothing to quell Anathema’s shock. “What the _hell,_ ” she hisses, “is that supposed to mean?” 

“I believe what it means is that my Crowley”--he says ‘my’ before he can stop himself, then mentally winces--“was… or, rather, _is…_ the Great Serpent of the Garden of Eden.” He stops there for a second, already feeling like he’s done ill. However, he’s intrigued. It makes him feel horrible. 

Anathema stares at Aziraphale, her eyes the size and shape of dinner plates, for a few more moments before slamming her hand down on the desk without so much as a warning. “Read more. Now.” 

With a cursory glance to gauge Anathema’s level of sanity (low, but nothing out of the ordinary yet), Aziraphale flips forward a chunk of pages. “I’ve already read that front bit,” he says as an excuse. He lands on something twenty-odd pages ahead, then reads aloud: “ _And when Moses asked the Pharaoh again: ‘let my people go!’ the Pharaoh’s demon Crawly stood at the temple-doorway, arms-a-crossed. He spoke unto Moses: ‘You sure about that, my guy?’”_

Both of them physically cringe. “I mean, that’s not great,” Anathema says, “but I guess it’s not _directly_ murder?” 

“It’s bad, Anathema, just call it what it is,” sighs Aziraphale, and he flips forward another bank of pages. He finds another section to read from. _“_ Uh-- here. This bit seems-- uh. It says, _‘The demon Crawly was freed of his contract after the son of the widow perished under conditions of illness to which Crawly surely was not tied. Jesus arrived to the village of Nain much later in the day and said unto the son: ‘Young man, I say to thee, arise!’ The demon Crawly’s former charge arose as though simply from slumber, but their contract was not reforged, as Crawly’s soul-claim had been forfeited upon death.”_

The pair of them look at each other for a moment in consternation. “That one wasn’t as exciting, really,” Anathema comments. 

“They don’t all get to be exciting,” Aziraphale sniffs primly. “I don’t know what you were expecting.”

“More action, I think,” Anathema says. “He’s a demon. More, like-- blood and cults and stuff.” 

“I told you already, he’s not that type of being. He’s quite proper,” Aziraphale argues. He thinks that Crowley would be pressed to be truly cruel. Snarky, yes, standoffish, yes, but he’s not been cruel. 

“Oh, shut up and keep reading, Aziraphale. Give me some action.” 

Aziraphale scoffs and skips a few passages until he comes to one that interests him. Once again, he feels a surge of distaste at the fact that he’s interested at all, but at this point, he’s decided that he’s in it for the time being— at least until his caffeine buzz wears off and his higher moral functions kick in. “ _As the Son of the Heavens and Lamb of God, Jesus Christ himself, prayed upon the Garden of Gethsemane with his Apostles, Peter, John, and James, the demon Crawly stood at the foot of the garden’s great hill. ‘He’s just up that way,’ the demon Crawly said to his contractor, Judas Iscariot, who had instructed him to follow. ‘Y’can’t miss him. Sweating blood and bullets, He is.’ ‘What are bullets?’ Judas asked. ‘Forget about it,’ replied Crawly.”_

“Forget about it?” Anathema says, as though Crowley’s nonchalance is more baffling than the situation as a whole. 

“I can’t say it’s out of character,” Aziraphale replies, looking slightly ashamed.

After a moment of contemplation, Anathema goads Aziraphale on. “Is there more?” 

Aziraphale flips forward another few pages. One page has a blurred, charcoal drawing of three crosses on a hill, a single darkened figure at their base. The biblical crucifixion, he assumes. There are marks where the artist’s hand dragged over the unsettled coal as if in a rush. It feels more personal, and Aziraphale decides not to linger.

He pulls a sizable chunk of pages and jumps forward through the thick tome. He notes that, for such an old book, it’s still surprisingly well-bound. When he lands, the pages that spread before him are completely blank. His eyebrows draw together, then he flips forward more. Blank. Blank. Blank. 

He turns the page one more time and his eye falls on a very familiar passage. It’s the recipe that he read all those months ago-- the one that summoned Crowley in the first place. The corners of his lips tip up a little at the memory and the sentiment he associates with it. “Oh, I know this page. It’s--”

“Three Steps To Charging Your Crystals With The Power Of The Entire Multiverse?” Anathema reads, head cocked to the side. Through Aziraphale’s eyes, it’s still a recipe for a sinfully rich cake. “Oh, I’ve got to read this,” she starts, but Aziraphale grabs her attention before she can. 

“No, no, no, wait-- this is a recipe for me. This right here. A recipe for--” he reads it again. “For chocolate-amaretto crepe cake!”

“This same passage?” Anathema brackets the text with her fingers.

“Yes!” 

Anathema bends over the page and squints at it, as though she’s trying to deduce what trickery it’s utilizing. “So it’s different for both of us?” 

“Yes?” Aziraphale answers with a questioning lilt to his voice. “I suppose I’m not an expert, but--”

“I bet it’s supposed to be a lure-- like, it--” Anathema pulls her hand up and wiggles her fingers next to her temple, a surefire sign that whatever she’s going to say next is going to be wild. “--It’s psychic or something! It changes to make itself appealing, or whatever. Like-- oh, like zoophilous flowers!”

“What the very _hell_ are you talking about?”

Anathema begins pacing, gesticulating rapidly as she does. “I read this article about bat pollination recently? And apparently some species of flowers will evolve whole new characteristics to make themselves more appealing to pollinators.” 

The following squint of Aziraphale’s eyes is a clear indicator of his suspicion. “What’s that got to do with this book? Books don’t evolve. The language does, but that's besides-- I mean-- it’s obviously the very same as it was thousands of years ago. It’s a book.” 

In an instant, Anathema spins and stops right in front of Aziraphale, her skirts whirring around her. She’s got a sparkle in her eye that Aziraphale finds wholly fearsome. “But it’s a _demonic_ book! I’m not saying it _evolved,_ just-- maybe it’s a spell or something! To make the book more appealing to the humans that find it!” 

“That’s absolutely mad, Anathema, you realize that?” Aziraphale says, but he can’t help but mentally admit that it sounds maybe a tiny bit feasible, in some far-off corner of his brain. Anathema opens her mouth-- clearly to further argue her point and cause Aziraphale additional mental distress, as she is wont to do-- but Aziraphale holds up a hand. “Anathema, please, I’m fragile.” 

Anathema keels back and frowns. “You’re not _fragile,_ Aziraphale. That bookcase fell on you last summer and if you hadn’t nearly 127-Hours’d yourself, you wouldn’t have been hurt at all--” 

“What I mean to say is-- if you go on much longer, there’s a chance it’s going to be my end,” Aziraphale clarifies tentatively, leveling a blank look at the self-proclaimed witch. “I don’t want to theorize about this book any more, my dear. I really don’t want to read it any more, either.” 

“No-- Aziraphale! You’ve got to read more. There’s so much you can _learn!_ Not just about Crowley, but about demons, Hell-- it’s too interesting not to keep going!” Anathema insists, eyebrows drawn together and a ravenous curiosity about her. 

Clearly, she isn’t going to take no for an answer. At least, not a passive no. Aziraphale schools his expression into something firm. “No, Anathema. It’s my choice as to whether or not I want to stay in the dark, please let me have that.” 

Anathema, a woman who, by now, is very familiar with Aziraphale’s stubbornness as well as her own (and is well-versed in recognizing when A) their oxheaded personalities are about to collide in a way that could birth a supernova and B) there’s no way for her to come out on top), decides to drop it. She huffs an annoyed breath and makes a show of rolling her eyes. “Fine, Aziraphale, but you’d better be playing it safe. If I find out you’re gambling your life for something stupid, no demon’s gonna be able to stop me from throttling you.” 

She says it like a knife pointed to the chest, but with a smile teasing at the corners of her lips. Aziraphale knows by now that it isn’t a threat: it’s protection. A promise. An arm around his shoulder. He also knows that she’s right; if the forces of Hell stood between her and Aziraphale’s happiness, let alone his life itself, he has no doubt she’d go down kicking and screaming at the very least. 

This is extra clear when Anathema hugs him goodbye, wishes him well, and leaves the pastry she bought from Marjorie sitting on Aziraphale’s desk for him. It’s not the first time she’s pulled that move. He unwraps the lemon-cranberry scone and bites into it gently, grinning all the while. 

For a short time, Aziraphale relinquishes himself to his daily, menial tasks. He put them off earlier, having been jittery. He busies himself restocking, putting out freshly-refurbished books onto the shelves, and reading blurbs from a couple new finds to distract himself from going back to his desk and re-opening that god damned book. 

Yes, that’s right. Despite all his talk with Anathema earlier, he’s _so_ sorely tempted to keep reading. He’d thought before that maybe reading a bit of it would sate him, or that the guilt would be too overwhelming and he’d find himself unable to do it. Instead, he’s shaky and pacing and wondering if he could find an excuse to read more. He isn’t sure if it’s the book’s thrall, Anathema’s words, or his own thought process that’s brought him to this, but he’s ready to blame all three if it means he can peer between those pages again.

(After all, it _is_ his choice, isn’t it? Crowley hasn’t tried to take it, not when he was summoned and not since then. He hasn’t asked after it. Actually, every statement he’s made about it points to his uncaring. The longer Aziraphale paces, the longer he’s convinced of it: Crowley wouldn’t mind.)

Despite his best effort, he’s so, so, _so_ undeniably curious. It’s in his nature! He wants to know more-- he wants to know what led Crowley to him. There has to be things he missed, and he wants to know everything, because he knows nothing that was done could possibly lessen how he feels for Crowley. Demon or not.

He lasts all of an hour before he’s seated back at his desk, flipping through the pages in a flurry, skimming as he goes. He finds a chunk he missed after the drawing of the crucifixion he saw before, and he drinks in the words with incredible attention. 

“ _And when the Great Serpent Crowley looked upon all Caligula had wrought, he saw for the first time what power he held. He saw what pain it could bring, what suffering._

_In January of 41 A.D., Caligula learned he was not a god, regardless of how much power he held, how many demons’ contracts he possessed or how many people he abused. I took his soul upon his death, and I delivered it unto the deepest pit of Hell I was allowed.”_

The shift of point-of-view catches Aziraphale off-guard. Is this the only bit Crowley wrote first hand?-- No, when he flips back through the pages, he realizes it’s all in the same chicken-scratch handwriting. The same handwriting that appears on his skin during the day, reminding him to drink his tea before it gets cold and of doctor’s appointments he’d otherwise forget. 

Did Crowley write this book?

Aziraphale flips to the next page, but it’s blank. Then the next. Then again. The next hundred pages are blank as anything-- no sign or sight of Crowley or his history anywhere. 

Then, there’s a page marked _1827,_ which reads: “ _Purchased a flat in Mayfair. Excellent Western exposure. Thinking of buying a plant or two._ ”

Then nothing. 

Then, _1933: “Finally got my hands on a Bentley. Reward for the success of bathtub gin.”_

_1967: “Church heist a mild success. Now at least if They come knocking, I won’t be defenseless._ _Why am I writing this down in here? What good does this do? Stupid demonic wankers and their stupid mandated [smudged text]. Oughta get rid of this thing once and for a [smudged, again]._ _”_

After that, there’s nothing more until the summoning incantation, which Aziraphale now realizes is in an entirely foreign handwriting. Certainly not Crowley’s. 

He begins to piece together what that could mean as soon as his higher moral instincts kick back in and he feels the book’s thrall begin to ease. Suddenly, something about the idea that Crowley wrote this himself makes it much too personal for him to keep going. The idea that he wrote it and then someone else defiled it with a spell in their own messy scrawl is even worse. 

He slams the book shut with as much force as he can muster, as though that’ll keep the thrall out of his mind. Of course, that does very little, so he shoves it back in its previous drawer. That’s better. 

Now with entirely too much to think about, Aziraphale goes to re-warm his tea and have a think and re-read _Hamlet._ One can’t be occupied with the historical shenanigans of their contracted demon if they’re reading _Hamlet._

\--

The door to the office swings open and a short, pale demon with cornflower-blue scleras and glowing white irises sizes him up across the six-inch canyon between them. 

“Crowley,” the demon says, their lip curling up to reveal a set (or three) of white pointed teeth. It might be a smile, but it might also be a snarl. It’s generally unclear with this one, whose name is--

“Basmuuth,” Crowley nods, voice only slightly venomous. 

“It’s been a coupl’a decades, pal,” Basmuuth remarks, stepping back to let Crowley into their office. “Where’ve y’ been?” 

“Earthside, you know how it is,” Crowley shrugs, settling in one of the chairs across from the huge, dark-wood desk that Basmuuth keeps in here. It easily takes up a third of the room, which is altogether slightly moist and smells gently of salt. The walls, Crowley thinks, are oozing a little bit.

“I _don’t_ know how it is, actually,” Basmuuth retorts, voice a familiar whine and smile a well-known white crescent. They move to sit behind their desk. “You _know_ they haven’t let me up in _years_.” 

“1988, I remember,” Crowley hums. There’d been a dent in his car for weeks after that, even his demonic powers couldn’t get it out. He couldn’t forget. He leans coolly across the back of the chair he’s laid claim over. It squelches as he shifts. “How’ve you been?” 

Basmuuth’s smile turns patronizing in an instant. “Crowley, we both know ya’ don’t care. Y’ only come down to the lawyer’s circle when y’ need something. So tell me.” They recline in their rolling chair sleazily, their navy, satin three-piece suit riding up as they lean, their cummerbund shifting slightly. “Why are _you_ in _my_ neck of the shoal today?” 

Basmuuth never has been one for pleasantries, he’d nearly forgotten. Crowley releases a breath, his shoulders falling a bit before he says, “I’ve contracted a human.” 

For a moment, Basmuuth looks genuinely surprised. “You? When’s the last time you did that?” 

Crowley makes a few noncommittal sounds. “Euugh-- uh, well. I _believe_ it was--” 

In an instant, Basmuuth has a file in their clawed hand. “39 A.D.,” they finish. “Caligula.”

Crowley is looking at the mushy linoleum floor. “Yu _p,_ ” he nods, relinquishing his dignity. Even in Hell, he feels the need to _try_ to keep it, but it never lives long in the confines of Basmuuth’s office. “Caligula.”

Basmuuth claps the file shut. “It’s been nearly two millenia, Crowley. That’s a long, long fucking time. How have you been explaining that in your reports?” 

Crowley can’t help but stammer some more. “Ha-- uh, well, ha, actually, it’s funny, uh--” 

“You lied,” Basmuuth supplies with an arched, pointed eyebrow. The gills on their neck flutter and they cross their arms. 

“Pretty demonic of me, right?” Crowley says, only barely convincing himself of it. “Retiring.” 

Basmuuth levels a judgmental look at him for a few seconds. “Yeah,” they eventually say, slapping the file down on their desk and folding their hands atop it. They lean forward. “Real demonic, Crowley. Why are you here about this, and why the Heaven shouldn’t I turn you in for negligence?” 

“You shouldn’t turn me in because it’s impressive,” Crowley tells, putting the full weight of his confidence behind that one. That leaves none for his next statement. “And-- uh-- I’m here because I-- seem to have forgotten how long a contract lasts, and-- the details of expiry.” 

The gills on Basmuuth’s neck flutter again. “When’s the last time y’ brushed up on contracting regulations?” they ask, face expressionless. 

“Uhh--” he thinks for a moment. “39 A.D.” 

Basmuuth scoffs. “How is it that you’re _the_ most incompetent demon in Hell?” they ask rhetorically, their eyes rolling. “As of 453 A.D., demons' contracts can only last a year. People were getting wild up on Earth, keepin’ demons out of Hell’s ranks for too long, so we put a stop to it.” 

A year. That means he has-- seven months. Seven months with Aziraphale. He can do that, he thinks. Seven months. It’s not nothing, but it’s also not-- not long _._ Not _enough,_ especially after having envisioned years and years with this human by his side. He can’t think about that right now, though, he has more things he needs to know. “What about expiry?” he asks, semi-breathlessly. 

“Ah-- yeah. Around the turn of the century, I think, they-- uh, they changed the expiry rules. Needed them to be tighter, I guess.” They’re reading from a soggy, miracled piece of paper now, and they itch their nose. “They used to have the soul default to Hell at the human’s natural death-- you know that bit-- but they changed it so that at the end of the contract year, if you haven’t killed ‘em and taken the soul yourself, the Custodian’ll come and do it for you. They’ll collect for general expense, like they would any other human soul.” 

“What?” Crowley barks, leaning forward in his chair. “That’s-- that’s preposterous. There’s no way that’s true.” 

Basmuuth flips the sheet of paper around. Crowley squints to read from it. He sits back in his chair with a thunk. “Well, I’ll be damned.” 

“Too late for that one, bud,” Basmuuth retorts, placing the paper on top of Crowley’s file. “I sense that there’s more story to this, Crowley, and if y’ want me to take any sort’a sympathy with your case, here-- because there _is_ a case here, I can tell-- you’re gonna tell me what it is.” 

That deflates Crowley much more than nearly anything else Basmuuth has said. Crowley folds over a little bit, wiping his face with his hand and taking his sunglasses off. He groans. “Okay, Basmuuth, I’m going to be honest with you.” 

“Please do,” Basmuuth says, entirely unimpressed. 

“I’m in love with him. The human,” Crowley admits, not yet up from his folded-over position and thus not looking Basmuuth in the eye. He looks at his lap instead. “I love him.” 

Basmuuth scoffs. “You said you’d be _honest!”_ they squawk. 

“I _am_ being honest, Basmuuth!” Crowley rejoinders harshly, leaning up to look at him with his severe yellow eyes. They’re all blown out, wide, startling. 

Basmuuth jolts appropriately. “You can’t be serious, Crowley! Demons can’t love!”

“They can, Bas-- or _I_ can, at the very least. I know I can. I _know_ that’s what this is. There’s nothing else it could be. I was on Earth too long and it soft-boiled me and now I’m in love with a human and he’s going to _die_ because of me and I don’t know what to _do.”_ He chokes post-ramble, as though his throat is filled with smoke. He rubs at his face again, settles it over his mouth, and speaks his next words through his fingers. “I have _no idea_ what to do, Basmuuth, but if he dies, the God-damned Custodian might as well take me, too.” 

There’s silence in the office for a moment, other than the sound of a slow, steady, faraway dripping. Crowley takes a few calming breaths. Basmuuth, on the other hand, does not breathe at all. 

“Holy Hell,” Basmuuth remarks. “Ha.” They whistle. “You actually are in love with him, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Crowley says shortly, having returned to rubbing at his eyes. 

“Alright. I’ll offer my professional advice to help y’ get out of this one,” Basmuuth relents. “No charge. But-- ah, if you want more than that, any  _ real _ help, you know the price is--”

“No, Bas,” Crowley snaps, sitting up to look at them again. “There’s  _ no _ way you’re going to get anything from me, let alone _that_. We’ve talked about this.” 

“Not even for the love of your life?” Basmuuth asks, and damn them-- for a second, Crowley considers it. 

Then he gets his head back on straight. “No, Bas-- no. No. I’ll--” He gets up from his chair. “I’m going back to Earth for now, and I’ll-- I’ll be back in a week. Come up with something before then, alright? Anything that can get me out of this contract and keep the both of us alive.” 

“Anything you say, boss,” Basmuuth hums, sitting back in their chair and kicking their legs up onto their desk. “But the offer still stands, should y’ need it.” 

“I won’t,” Crowley assures them in a low, warning tone before storming out of the office and wrenching the door shut behind him. 

“I give ‘im five days,” Basmuuth says to the empty room, folding their arms behind their head. 

\-- 

_JUNE 27, 2019_

Three days after his rather unfortunate conference with Basmuuth, Crowley finds himself arriving at A.Z. Fell and Co. not by summoning, but by foot. During their last meeting, Crowley had accidentally let it slip that he enjoyed spending time in the bookshop aimlessly, and the ensuing conversation had resulted in Aziraphale insisting that, if that’s the case, Crowley can come and go as he pleases. Of course, Crowley had to put up a cursory argument-- _you can’t just give a demon free rein over its comings and going, angel--_ but Aziraphale had stopped that in its tracks-- _no, not to a demon, but I can give free rein to you._

The resulting argument had come to a head, and then to an agreement: Crowley can come over whenever he wants, so long as he gives Aziraphale fair warning. That was Crowley’s stipulation, not Aziraphale’s. He may be a demon, but he has little wish to intrude. 

Thus, with the ink on his arm still drying ( _free day, bored, comin over_ ), he strides down the sidewalk and toward the bookshop. (His Bentley is parked a mile back. He wanted to walk, needed time to think.) He didn’t mention to Aziraphale that he doesn’t have _free days,_ that all his days are technically free. He’s retired. He supposes there’s a lot of things he hasn’t mentioned to Aziraphale; a lot of things he ought to mention. 

That’s why he wanted to walk.

The bookshop is in sight, and he slows his steps, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and swinging his feet for the ultimate leisurely gait. The cool walk is one of the things he believes he’s truly mastered during his existence, and he displays his skill rightly.

He loves Aziraphale. He knows this. He hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s fallen in love yet, but he’s aware of it. He’s warm to the idea. Crowley knows that he loves him, and he knows how deep that love goes. After his meeting with Basmuuth, he also knows that he’s only got seven months left with him unless he pulls some serious strings-- strings that could have repercussions. Strings that could get either one of them killed. Strings he isn’t even sure he could reach, let alone pull, let alone pull _successfully._

He’s wondering if he’s willing to risk everything to keep Aziraphale around. But wondering is altogether the wrong word, because somewhere in his gut, he knows he is. He _can’t_ let Hell have Aziraphale’s soul. He just can’t. 

Someday soon, he’s going to have to tell Aziraphale what’s going on, what he learned from Basmuuth. He’s dreading it. He doesn’t want Aziraphale to think that he lied or kept this from him on purpose. He keeps imagining up the worst case scenario, no matter how hard he tries to stave it off-- that it’ll make Aziraphale finally see the bad in him. That it’ll make him finally see him for what he truly is: a demon.

The more he thinks about it, though, the more he’d like to wait to tell him. While he’s aware he has to mention it _someday,_ he doesn’t want to say anything yet; he’d rather try to figure this contract business out on his own first and save Aziraphale the worry. The pain. He’s scared, yes, but somewhere inside him he knows he can figure it out if he finds the right people, he’s just got to-- he’s got to put in the work. 

And he knows he’s willing to. For Aziraphale.

Before he’s fully aware of it, his slow-slow steps bring him to the front door of the bookshop. He raises his fist and raps twice on it. The door swings open a few seconds later, and Aziraphale’s smile is blinding. Crowley squints behind his sunglasses, and it’s only partially due to the huge grin on his lips. “Oh, good afternoon, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, joy unwavering. “It’s so nice to see you! Come in, my dear, I made tea.” 

Crowley trails after Aziraphale, flops into a chair, accepts a cup of tea, and idly listens to him titter on about the nice, breezy summer weather while he reshelves some books. Aziraphale thinks they should go on a picnic, on a walk along the beach, and he says as much. Crowley gives a shallow hum of agreement, too busy thinking. 

(He’s thinking about telling Aziraphale about the reservation he got them at the Ritz that’s scheduled in few months, thinks about how happy it’ll make him. Then the thought breaches, rather intrusively, of telling him that he’s got seven months to live. 

A shiver runs through him at the thought.)

“Are you cold, dear boy?” Aziraphale asks, having been paying attention. He always is, to some degree. He doesn’t know when it happened, but at some point Crowley’s well being became rather important to him, to the point where he’d immediately mentally located the nearest blanket at the idea of Crowley having caught cold. 

“No,” Crowley replies too-quickly. “Just got a chill, is all.” 

Aziraphale’s gaze lingers on him for a few seconds too long. He’s worried, and they both know it. “If you’re sure, dear.” 

“I’m sure,” he nods, taking a sip of his tea. 

There’s a moment of companionable, easy silence during which the only palpable sounds are Aziraphale shuffling books about and their de-synced breathing. Aziraphale pauses for a moment, looking out the front windows without explanation, then turns to Crowley. 

“Picnic next Wednesday, then? It’s supposed to be overcast, not too hot,” Aziraphale asks, a certain veneer of nervousness having paled his features. 

“Mm? Yeah, that sounds nice, angel,” Crowley agrees, having been lost in thought again. 

Aziraphale looks away again and huffs. This is a habit Crowley has come to know well. There’s something Aziraphale wants to say, and Crowley is going to do his best to facilitate it. “What’s wrong, angel?” 

With pursed lips, a furrowed brow, and downcast eyes, Aziraphale turns his face back. His pale blue irises flit up to meet Crowley’s, then back to the floor. “Are you okay, Crowley? You seem… distracted.” 

_Shit, fuck, damn it—_ “No, sorry, I’m fine,” he lies. “Should never’ve learned to sleep, now if I don’t get enough I find myself all"-- he wiggles his fingers-- "wiggly." 

Aziraphale’s eyes flit away and back again. “Are you quite sure that’s all?” 

_Satan, damn it! Just tell him! He’s asking!_ “Actually,” he starts, then nearly chokes on his tongue. “I should tell you…” Aziraphale is looking at him with acute intensity, his eyes burning holes in Crowley’s as though they’re the ones lit gold with wildfire, not his own. It makes him stumble. 

He looks away and decides that now isn’t the time, not when it’s still so new. “I just-- I have something I want to talk to you about. Not now, but soon. S’nothin’ bad.” He barely contains a wince at his untruth. “Just something you should know.”

Aziraphale isn’t satisfied by this, not really. If anything, he finds himself a tad panicked; it nearly sounds like Crowley’s figured out Aziraphale’s-- his-- his _feelings._ It’s probably demonically illegal for a human to love a demon, let alone for that human to… to want the demon to love him back. But if Crowley is good at deflecting, Aziraphale is better. It’s a human skill, really. “Perhaps you can talk to me about it at our picnic,” Aziraphale suggests, his smile light and playful, concealing his nervousness.

This does its job fantastically. Crowley smirks, seemingly releasing his prior tension. “Yeah, angel, that sounds good. Perhaps I will.”

“Good,” Aziraphale claps, standing up straighter. “Now that that’s settled, would you like to go for lunch? I’m a bit peckish.” 

“Peckish? Unacceptable,” Crowley comments, still smiling a bit. He heaves himself up from his seat and strides to Aziraphale’s side, offering his arm. “It’s on me.” 

Aziraphale levels a chiding look at him, but takes his arm all the same. “I’m not going to let you magic away our tab, Crowley. The staff deserves compensation.” 

“Magic away a tab?” Crowley has the gall to look offended, bringing his free hand to his chest like a slighted Victorian maiden as they start for the door. “I would never!” 

Aziraphale bumps him with his shoulder good-naturedly. “Don’t think I’ve not seen you do it, dear, you’re not as stealthy as you think you are.”

“I’m a creature of the night, Aziraphale.” 

“You’re no such thing.” Aziraphale pushes the door open and greets the warmth of the outdoors while feeling a wholly unrelated warmth blossom in his chest, one that may be distinctly tied to the arm leading him forward. “Bloody awful creature of the night, you are.” Aziraphale is grinning. Crowley scoffs and rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile twitching his lips, as well. 

They make their way to the restaurant, bickering good-naturedly the entire way. Aziraphale’s arm never leaves Crowley’s. The feelings in their chests match one another’s. If Aziraphale allows his free hand to linger on Crowley’s arm for a few moments too long, neither of them mention it. 

And if Crowley allows himself to think for a small while that it’s all going to be okay _,_ who can blame him? Perhaps some of that ever-so-human optimism rubbed off on him over all those years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more asap, my sweet friends! fun fact: I gave Marjorie a medieval cat tarot deck in homage to my own, which was my first deck ever. thank you, sweet medieval cats.
> 
> [you can read ahead and get behind-the-scenes stuff on patreon!](https://patreon.com/goosetooths) come yell at me on twitter or instagram at @goosetooths!


	5. breach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley go on an outing. Aziraphale confesses something. Crowley self-reflects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEYYY, we're back! this chapter is particularly gay. also, no matter what you think after this chapter, i would like to point VERY enthusiastically to the 'happy ending' tag :) dont you worry, my friends
> 
> warnings in this chapter for: death, talk of Crowley's fall, lots of thirstiness, consumption of alcohol, drunken touching, some death/existential talk, and some more canon-typical secret keeping! thank you to arcafira, chubbyhornedequine, and the rest of the beta squad for all their hard work!
> 
> our song for this chapter is [sun by sleeping at last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y8iJ_8SoI0). a sweet song that goes hand in hand with the feelings and themes in here! our lyrics are:
> 
> _our once-barren world brims with life,_   
>  _that we may fall in love every time_   
>  _we open up our eyes._   
>  _i guess space and time take violent things,_   
>  _angry things,_   
>  _and makes them kind._
> 
> _(let there be light, let there be light, let me be alright.)_

Five months ago, a piece of paper popped into being and fluttered onto the milk-white surface of a desk in the middle of a realm occupied by a single tenant. It was almost immediately shuffled under many other papers, temporarily lost to infinite spacetime. 

On each of these papers, a single date. The date of a human expiration.

A semi-corporeal hand-- translucent, pink-white-grey, and elegantly clawed-- takes a slip off of the top of the pile. The hand lifts the paper to what could generously be thought of as the being’s face. The being scans the surface of the paper with globe-eyes, harsh orange and shining. 

It reads the name, place, date. The time written in pale, shimmering ink happens to be Right Now. 

With legs comprised of little more than aura and whim, the being strides to a large, shining door with something akin to a mail slot on its lower half. The being slides the paper through, where it burns into nonexistence on the other side. The being listens to a whirring click through the door, like a roulette machine turning through all of time and space, waiting to land on a location and time predestined by reality itself. The clicking slows and slows until it stops. 

The very star-stuff that makes up the being whips and turns and roils in a nonexistent wind. Its hand comes to lay on the door’s handle and turns it. When it opens, the time and place that were written upon the paper sprawl out before its eyes, which shine like deadlights-- like twin suns, with the same set of rules. (Don’t look into them.)

The human name that had been scrawled in feather-fine ink on the slip belongs to a human that is now within the being’s purview. It strides out and into a room filled with humans who cannot see it, on legs which do not fully exist. 

It comes into the view of a human reclined in a bed, breathing laboriously. Her eyes do not open. The being knows her name. It read it on a piece of paper, next to a time and a date.

The human still does not wake. Her lungs rattle and wheeze with the effort of her breath. The being brings one gentle hand down on the human’s chest, on the convergence of her ribs. The hand pushes through the flesh, into the chest cavity. It grasps, feels, _pulls._

The human comes to consciousness, but she is not awake. She doesn’t see those gathered around her in mourning, in solidarity with one another in a hard time. She doesn’t hear their cries or feel their warmth. All she knows is the pair of orange eyes staring down at her. The enormous, shimmering silhouette that stands over her bed.

Out of her mouth spills a final breath. She falls between one realm and into another, pulled by the being’s hand and a string of fate. The human’s eyes don’t focus on the being’s face-- she can’t, even if she wanted to-- but it knows she can feel its presence. 

“Who are you?” she asks, her voice no longer weakened by sickness. Her eyes squint against The Light that shines in her eyes. 

The being figures it can spare this human its name. After all, she’s vulnerable. She’s allowed menial comforts in a time such as this. 

“The Custodian,” it says with a voice like wind, and the human’s soul falls into its hand. 

\--

_JULY 2, 2019_

Exactly five days after their previous meeting, on a not-too-horribly-sunny day, Crowley watches as Aziraphale painstakingly packs a picnic and makes sure to keep his eyes averted from the fit of Aziraphale’s linen pants on his thighs; pale ivory against his skin, all thin fabric that leaves nothing to the imagination. 

Crowley forcibly focuses on a branch that’s thumping rhythmically against the bookshop windows in the breeze in order to ignore the pull of Aziraphale’s arm muscles, exposed by the short sleeves of his button up shirt, just like the fuzz of blonde hair that peeks out at the bottom of the V of the collar where it’s unbuttoned, or--

Satan below. If Hell knew of this, they’d never let him live it down.

(Several things can be assumed of Crowley, many of them correct. One such assumption: he’s never been in love before. Never even waxed poetic about it, about how much he wants it. Being a demon, he didn't think it was possible. He didn’t think demons could love. However, as he’s discovered, they can and will-- or, at the very least, _he_ can and will. 

On one hand, he doesn’t think there could be a better individual to have fallen in love with, besides the whole ‘human’ thing. Aziraphale is simultaneously the biggest bastard and the sweetest soul Crowley’s ever met, and it drives him to madness in a way Hell only wishes it could harness.

On the other, it’s a complete pain. He’d do anything to rid himself of the intrusive, mushy thoughts about how soft Aziraphale would feel in his arms, or in his bed, or--)

That branch bangs the windowpane again and rips Crowley from his reverie. He crosses his legs. 

Just in time, too, as Aziraphale spins on his heel and walks out of the kitchenette with a fully-packed picnic basket in hand. Crowley has no idea what’s inside of it. He was _otherwise occupied._ To be fair, he’ll barely eat any of it. Not only is he still not in the habit of eating, he’s also dreadfully nervous.

If he were to pay any bit of attention to Aziraphale’s grip on his picnic basket right now, though, he’d notice that Aziraphale is just as nervous as he is. The man in question tightens his hold on the basket in order to quell his shaking. “Are you ready to set off, dear boy?” 

Crowley’s eyes shoot over to him, and he thanks the powers that be that he always wears his sunglasses. They come in handy, and not only because his eyes are _horrific,_ in his opinion-- but also because those two pools of yellow on his face are quick to betray his emotions. Right now, they conceal the nervous flittering of his irises. 

“Uh— mhm. Yeah, ready, angel,” Crowley answers belatedly, hoisting himself off the couch and to Aziraphale’s side. 

Aziraphale gives him one of those blinding smiles, and they set off. 

Of course, it’s Crowley who ends up carrying the picnic basket. 

It’s not that Aziraphale isn’t capable of carrying it. Rather the opposite, really: years of owning a bookshop have made him rather an expert at carrying heavy things, like stacks of books, or shelves, or a picnic basket containing one too many macarons. It’s not that he’s not strong enough, no. 

It’s that a Crowley without something to do is a very, very antsy Crowley. 

It’s something Aziraphale is hyperaware of at this point in their several-month-long _thing._ Having Crowley around and not giving him something to do is equivalent to having a garage with no car to put in it, or having no books, but a lovely bookshelf. Sure, those things still function for something, but not necessarily as intended. In the same way, Crowley functions best when given something specific to be doing, even if that thing is just ‘please, relax’ or ‘let me read to you’ or ‘could you close that window, my dear, it’s getting drafty in here.’ 

Even if that thing is just ‘carry this basket for me, that’s a dear. I’ll give you a macaron for your efforts, I know you’ve got quite the sweet tooth.” 

(He’d never agree to that. Even if it’s true.) 

Regardless, Aziraphale’s doing his best to let Crowley try and make his own decisions. He’d asked today if Crowley would rather have cocoa or alcohol, which is why they have both. (He’s working on it, Aziraphale knows, but baby steps.)

They arrive at the beach late enough in the day that dinner is an acceptable meal to be eating, but early enough that it’s still relatively warm and bright out. Aziraphale picks out a spot and the two of them spread a blanket out in a place that’s cooled by a jutting-out of rock and framed on one side by a small smattering of tidepools. 

Aziraphale pretends not to notice Crowley’s excitement about the tidepools, but he makes a point of venturing over to them before settling on the blanket with any semblance of permanence and totes Crowley along, listening to his token complaints along the way. 

(Crowley wouldn’t admit it-- and Aziraphale wouldn’t attest to it-- but the way his eyes tracked the tiny silver fish and the way he smiled when Aziraphale insisted he feel the softness of the algae in the pools showed, in no small terms, that he was delighted all the same.)

They also wander along the shoreline for a fair bit of time, dipping gently into the waves with cuffed trousers and stopping to pick up the odd rock or shell. By the time they get back to their picnic, the sun is setting and turning the sky purple-blue.

Immediately, Aziraphale busies himself pulling out the food he prepared, and Crowley takes a moment to survey the landscape from this new viewpoint. The beach is nearly empty now; it’s just them and a couple other picnickers strewn along the shoreline a couple dozen metres off. They settle into comfortable conversation with practiced ease.

If you were to pass them by a half hour or so later, you’d see much of their food depleted and hear Aziraphale argue, “I’m telling you, Crowley, you aren’t going to see any ducks here,” while taking a delicate bite of an egg and cress sandwich.

“S’water, innit?” Crowley gesticulates rapidly before cutting into a sweet, red apple with a knife that’s sharper now than it was a few minutes ago. The apple is part of a well-bred strain and cost Aziraphale five pounds for a trio, which Crowley privately thinks is absurd. _The_ apple has to have been the most sought-after and delicious apple in the whole of history, and it was _free._ He doesn’t understand it. 

“Yes, but it’s _much_ too rough for small waterfowl like ducks. If you want to see ducks, I’ll take you to a pond.” 

“Do you have any ponds around here?” Crowley asks haughtily, his eyes crinkled in amusement, “‘cause I haven’t seen any, at least not of an acceptable waterfowl size.” 

Aziraphale harrumphs and steals the first slice that Crowley manages to free from his apple. Crowley huffs but allows it to happen despite existing as a being of infinite power and energy who could definitely stop him if he wanted to. With a quarter of the slice in his mouth, Aziraphale says, “No good ponds around here, I’m afraid. I’ll have to take you out to London sometime. St. James has a wonderful pond, plenty of ducks.” 

“London, eh? I have a flat up there, actually,” Crowley hums, pulling free another slice and biting a chunk off with his too-sharp fangs. Aziraphale finishes his slice and goes back to his sandwich. 

“Mayfair, right?” Aziraphale asks, eyebrow arched in genuine interest. (All his interest is genuine.) 

“Yes, actually,” Crowley answers, surprised and a little skeptical. “Wait-- when did I say that?” As a demon, he’s rather careful about giving away the location of his home base or any details about his life. He has no excuse not to tell Aziraphale these things-- actually, if he’s being honest with himself (and he rarely is) he’d like to tell him _more_ about himself, his past, his origins, but he isn’t completely confident it’ll be well-received, so he hasn’t. 

He _knows_ he hasn’t. 

It’s immediately evident on Aziraphale’s face that he _also_ knows he hasn’t. “Ah-- oh, dear, you must have mentioned it on one of our lunch outings, I could never remember which one.” 

Crowley fakes a thoughtful face. “Mm… no, I don’t think I did, no. Demonic memory and all, I’m thinking back on our little lunch dates and-- I distinctly _don’t_ remember telling you about my Mayfair flat.”

“I looked you up,” Aziraphale lies. A human lie, really. 

“I’m a demon, Aziraphale,” Crowley rejoinders blankly. “I’m not in the bloody phone book.” 

This is when true panic sets in in Aziraphale’s eyes. “Oh, well--” he begins what was likely a flimsy excuse. There’s really only one way he could know this without Crowley telling him himself. Crowley knows it, and he thinks Aziraphale does, too. 

“You read my book,” Crowley interrupts with a level eye, not a question, but an accusation. He’s admittedly a bit anxious about the idea of Aziraphale reading this book, even though it was he himself who left it in his possession in the first place.

Rather than try to immediately deny his involvement with the occult relic, Aziraphale’s eyes dart to the blanket that they sit on. After a couple moment’s contemplation, he relents: “Yes… I’m ever-so sorry, dear boy. It has some kind of-- a sort of _thrall_ that pulled me in, and I was so dreadfully curious. I didn’t mean to intrude upon you or anything of that nature... I do hope you can forgive me.” 

(Asking a _demon_ for forgiveness?) Crowley jumps and blinks a bit in surprise. 

In the wake of his admission, Aziraphale physically shrinks away, almost unconsciously scooting further from the demon as if in fear of his distrust. 

A small stretch of silence extends between them in which Crowley just looks at Aziraphale in wide-eyed astonishment, calculating his next move, and Aziraphale looks at the ground in some approximation of shame. Crowley decides he’ll be the one to break it just as Aziraphale begins to speak again. 

“And I want you to know that-- that I was planning on telling you. It was only a week or so ago that I read it, and-- and I’ve been thinking all this time how to let you know. I suppose that whatever plan I had is buggered, but-- but I had a whole speech planned-- and… well…” He takes a small, centering breath and looks up at Crowley for the first time during this whole spiel, his gaze intense. “I just want you to know that nothing I read in there changes what you are to me.” He pauses, then amends his statement, blushing softly, “That is-- you’re my friend, Crowley, and nothing you’ve done in the past can convince me that you’re not, maybe, just a little bit of a good person. Even if you’d deny it. You did some ill-willed things, I’ll admit, but you’re so— kind. You’ve never shown me anything but kindness.”

In the face of this, Crowley simply blinks his golden eyes a few times behind his glasses in staggering disbelief. He chooses not to touch on Aziraphale’s analysis of his character. “You… did you read it all? Cover to cover?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale confesses. “Or-- er-- well, I may have skipped a few bits, but it was only because I was anxious. Not because it doesn’t seem interesting, my dear, on the contrary-- your history is most fascinating!” he titters, smiling a bit to himself. “But I certainly got all the important parts, I think. I’m sorry again.”

“Don’t apologize any more, Aziraphale,” Crowley quiets, holding a hand up to shush him. “I should’ve known you’d read it, never leave a book with a known bibliophile unless you want it read, right? You’re not the first, I don’t mind.” 

(Not the first to read it, no— just the first not to run away screaming afterward.)

“You don’t mind?” Aziraphale asks timidly. ( _Cutely_ , Crowley’s mind supplies. He resists the urge to whack himself upside the head.)

“Nope,” Crowley answers, popping the ‘p’. “‘S easier than having me explain my whole history to you, I’ll admit. What— uh— what parts do you remember?” He’d like a clearer picture, thanks. 

Aziraphale, no longer worried, brightens considerably. “Oh! Well, I read about Eden, and your time with Judas-- most blasphemous, I have to say, not that I have a problem with that, mind-- as well as your time with, ah, the Son of the Widow of Nain, and with Pharoah, and Caligula. Then I went through and caught up to modern day, since-- well, since the reading gets so thin there. Easy to read. That’s where I learned about Mayfair.” 

Crowley blinks. “You— you weren’t scared? You read all that and you decided you still want to be my friend?” 

Aziraphale grins a small, pleased grin. “Oh, easily. I was more worried about you thinking I’d imposed upon your life than I ever was about being your friend. And you truly aren’t as scary as you think, my dear.” 

At this, Crowley can do little more than laugh a single, astonished laugh and settle further into his posture, looking at the horizon in disbelief. He laughs again. He looks back. “You’re unbelievable, do you know that?” 

“I have been told,” Aziraphale nods, a twinkle in his eye, “mostly by you.” 

And _fuck,_ Crowley does love him. He nearly says as much.

Instead, he twists the subject in a different direction, hoping that a change of pace will sort out his sticky thoughts. Still looking wistfully into the blue-purple cusp-of-dusk horizon dotted with the beginnings of stars, Crowley murmurs, “It doesn’t have _everything,_ you know.” 

This gets Aziraphale’s attention. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean-- I got that journal to keep track of my duties in Hell. Mandatory, you know. You’re smart, you’d probably figured that. But it has nothing about-- before.” 

Aziraphale’s a smart man, and Crowley doesn’t have to look at him to see the moment that that clicks in his head. “...You weren’t always a demon.” 

“Nope,” Crowley confirms. “Was an angel before.”

A breath leaves Aziraphale in a _whoosh._ A _sigh._ Crowley, if he were someone else, might describe its sound as _reverent._ “An angel?” 

Looking over at him, Aziraphale can almost see it. The flowing, pale robes set off by hair as red as a flame. Two great, white wings-- or maybe they were black all along. Inquisitive amber eyes. Perhaps a sword clutched in his hand. All shining in an inhuman, beautiful light. He has the distinct thought that, while this imaginary scene is radiant, the sight of Crowley before him on this clear-sky beach and surrounded by great white cliffs under a twilight sun is just as beautiful to him, if not moreso.

“Yup,” Crowley says, unconsciously pulling Aziraphale out of his daydream. He nods, dipping his chin so that he doesn’t have to look Aziraphale in the eye and see the awe on his face. “Made by God, Fell from Grace, all that fun stuff. I, actually, I--” He tilts his head toward the sky. “I made the stars.” 

There’s that reverent release of breath again. In the corner of Crowley’s eye, he sees Aziraphale look up to the same point that Crowley is looking at. “You did?” 

(No wonder they’re so beautiful, Aziraphale thinks.)

“Well, a lot of them, yeah. I had help. Wasn’t the-- the _only_ one, or something absurd like that. No, me and a few other angels. Can’t remember their faces, or their names, but I remember them.” He pauses to take a breath, then unconsciously scoots closer to Aziraphale and levers a pointing hand at the sky. 

They’re barely visible, but Aziraphale moves in towards him in order to see exactly which star cluster he’s pointing at. “Alpha Serpens,” Crowley says. “I made it. Lots of others, too, but Serpens is the one I’m most proud of. A beautiful cluster. Alpha Centauri’s another good one, but s’not visible from here.”

“Mm,” Aziraphale hums in acknowledgement, almost pressed against Crowley’s arm in order to see where Serpens lies. Crowley drops his arm and remains quiet, both of them still gazing out unto the darkening horizon, watching the stars get brighter. They sit like that for a few minutes, just watching, nearly pressed against one another. Aziraphale breathes shallowly, not wanting to press his luck. Crowley stops breathing altogether. 

After those minutes have passed, Crowley turns his head slightly towards Aziraphale and speaks ever-so quietly. “Don’t you want to know what happened?” 

Aziraphale turns toward Crowley, too, and they both realize at much the same time that they’re only a few centimetres apart. Just breaths separate them. Starstuff. Nothing but aether, so easy to cross, yet infinite in nature. Aziraphale feels one of those hot breaths, one of those unnecessary expellings of Crowley’s lungs, and speaks. “I do. But only if you want to tell me.” 

Crowley blinks, all slow and serpentine, and Aziraphale would swear on whatever gods that exist that Crowley’d looked at his lips behind those sunglasses. “I want to tell you,” Crowley murmurs, low tones barely audible against the night. 

“Then tell me,” Aziraphale responds.

Crowley looks towards the horizon again, to Aziraphale’s instant relief and disappointment. Aziraphale, though-- he keeps looking at Crowley, at his angular profile, as though he’s brighter than all those god-damned stars and Aziraphale himself is-- is a moth, or a plant, or something else that’s equally as drawn to light. 

“I got mixed up in the wrong crowd,” Crowley sighs. “Lucifer, I’m sure you’ve heard of him and his flock. They were into much darker things than I was. They wanted ill. I just wanted answers to my questions.” He takes a shaky breath, all at once remembering why he’s never talked about this before. “Heaven didn’t care why I was involved, though. Just got rid of the whole lot of us.” A pause, then: “Do you ever wonder why you were created?” 

He turns back to Aziraphale. Aziraphale looks at the ground, then into Crowley’s eyes again. “I used to,” he answers sincerely, locked with Crowley’s gaze. “I don’t anymore.” 

Crowley clicks his tongue. “Lucky you. I asked why and-- and was stripped of my being. I miss it, sometimes. Sometimes-- sometimes I-- I still feel something missing where Her Grace used to be.” 

“Her?” 

“God.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale says, looking away. He’d never been one to believe in God. Not even after he met Crowley and everything he’d ever believed to be false was proven true in one fell movement. (He was raised in faith, yes, but that doesn’t mean he has it.

Crowley, conversely, still has his faith.)

The demon leans away from Aziraphale just a bit, needing to breathe. “Woke up in the sulfur pits with these blasted eyes and this damned tattoo,” he huffs, his finger landing on the snake sigil at his temple. “And I couldn’t feel Her Love anymore. Can’t stand to look at myself, sometimes. Hate to look at these— _signs_ of my unholiness.” 

Crowley isn’t sure why he’s talking about this, why he’s decided to allow himself to be lashed open and spill his guts in front of this temporary being. This human. No other demon would do such a thing, would stoop so low as to explain themselves to a mortal. But, in his defense, Aziraphale doesn’t know why he’s talking about this either. 

Weirdly, they’re both grateful for it anyway. 

“I think they’re handsome,” Aziraphale comments quietly. “I understand why you don’t like them, dear boy, but— they’re beautiful to me. The tattoo as well. I’d be happy to see them more often, if you were comfortable with that.” 

He lifts his finger and brushes over the tattoo without a thought. It sends a full-body shiver through Crowley. “Ngk—” 

“Sorry,” Aziraphale whispers. “I suppose I should have asked.” He averts his eyes completely. 

As he looks away, Crowley sees the blue arches of light in Aziraphale’s eyes where the stars bounce off of them. _Fuck._ “It’s okay.” If it were anyone else, it wouldn’t be okay, it _wouldn’t be._

There’s a moment of tense, stretched-thin silence between them. Aziraphale gets out their thermos of whiskey and pours himself a generous amount of it whilst looking out at the stars Crowley made. After a moment, he pours Crowley a cup, too, and scoots it over to him. 

The silence melts from tenseness to comfort with this one small gesture, as though the invisible boundary between them broke again. Crowley takes the cup and sinks into his posture, leaning further back on his arm, and takes a sip. 

They remain in silence until the dark is well and truly settled in. Aziraphale pats his pockets for his watch— a golden, wing-emblazoned thing that’s truly quite silly— but doesn’t find it. Rather than appear distressed, he makes a comment about losing track of time, and Crowley can’t _not_ laugh at that. Any remaining tension between them softens and sloughs off, easy as anything. They each have enough whiskey to deplete the supply, chattering meaninglessly all the while.

Eventually, under the dark of night, they begin to pack up their picnic so they can head back to the bookshop. Aziraphale is saying something about a nightcap, and that’s never something Crowley can turn down. They’re just finishing up folding the blanket together when Aziraphale darts his eyes to Crowley, then away, and begins to speak hesitantly. “Stop me if this is horrible to say. You probably don’t agree,” he prefaces, “but I— I’m glad you’re a demon.”

Crowley barks a laugh in disbelief, throwing the folded blanket over his arm. “You’re right, I don’t agree. Why _ever_ would you say that?” 

In the dark it’s hard to tell, but Aziraphale might be blushing. He wrings his hands bashfully. “If you weren’t, we’d never have met. You might still be up in the stars, for all we know.” 

_Oh._

_Okay._

Crowley laughs again, but this time it’s little more than a faint snort, an imitation of a laugh. It’s not because this is funny. It’s not funny. Finding someone who genuinely cares for you isn’t _funny._

He laughs because he can hardly fucking believe his luck.

What’s funny is that Aziraphale, looking back at Crowley, can’t believe his either. 

\--

They walk back to the shop together, Aziraphale's left shoulder nearly brushing Crowley's right, their arms swinging out of sync and hands almost touching on every other movement. The blanket slung over Crowley's left arm and the basket in Aziraphale's right seem weightless compared to the force of the pull between them.

Aziraphale sees that they’re nearly halfway done with their leisurely stroll back to the bookshop by the time that he remembers that Crowley had something to tell him. He says as much. 

“Ah-- uh--” Crowley begins to stutter immediately, looking away from Aziraphale’s face and rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. He tilts his head back and forth as he continues to spit consonants rather than actually start a sentence, as if he can’t decide how to word what he wants to say-- or if he can’t decide what to speak of at all. 

(If we were to take a look inside that demonic brain of his, we’d see him cycling through responses: a part of him wants to spit out everything about the contract, every scary, horrible detail he found out from Basmuuth; another part knows that in the past five days he’s not found out a single piece of information that’ll make reassuring Aziraphale any easier than it would have been five days ago. 

Even another part is recalling those star-lit eyes on the beach, the way that Aziraphale’s thumb touched the tattoo on the side of his face, and wants to tell him about the contents of his heart. About the way it doesn’t beat, but if it did, the rhythm it laid would be in his name.

Eventually, he settles on something to say. Something that will fit, even if it isn’t what he’d like to tell Aziraphale, the human who has laid claim on that unbeating heart.)

“I-- I got us a reservation at the Ritz,” Crowley admits. “It’s not until October, even my demonic wiles couldn’t get a sooner date than that, but-- I figured--” 

Aziraphale cuts Crowley off by stopping in his tracks, grabbing him by the shoulder, and spinning him so that they’re facing one another on the sidewalk. They both sway a moment in their inebriation, but Aziraphale’s eye is steady. His expression is open and disbelieving. “Dear boy, you didn’t.” 

“Did, I’m afraid,” Crowley replies, the corner of his mouth quirking up despite his nervousness. “October thirteenth. Got us a fantastic table, I did. Get one of your suits ready, angel, I know you’ve got to have a handsome three-piece tucked away somewhere.” 

The world’s most tentative, hopeful smile blossoms on Aziraphale’s face and then blooms into a full grin, and Crowley wishes he could keep that image for far more than these few, fleeting seconds. He wants to make that smile happen every day. “Not a joke?” Aziraphale ventures. 

“Not a joke,” Crowley confirms. 

Aziraphale smiles and sways toward Crowley for a transient second, and somewhere in his slightly drink-addled mind, Crowley thinks— not for the first time that night— that he’s about to be kissed. Embraced, even. Touched in a way that they’ve not touched before. 

(He almost was, would have been if not for the ever-changing nature of human minds. If not for their anxiety.) 

Instead, Aziraphale passes the movement off as one of drunkenness, swaying away again as though he meant it all along. One of them thinks about stars, and orbits, and heavenly, heavenly bodies, but there’s no way to guarantee which one. 

Rather than give in to his impulse to touch, to hold, Aziraphale just cracks a watery smile. “Thank you, dear boy,” he says, little more than a whisper. Then, with the shred of compulsion the alcohol couldn’t stifle, he reaches out and grabs Crowley’s hand. His left to Crowley’s right. 

The demon’s breath hitches, just a bit. Enough that Aziraphale notices and moves to drop it, but Crowley keeps his grip at the last second. He holds on. Then, when it’s clear he’s not intending on letting go, he gives another squeeze, a cursory thing that says _no, don’t go._ A reassurance. An _I want this, too._ Aziraphale, unsure of the meaning but feeling the warmth, the realness of Crowley’s hand in his, latches back on, squeezes back, and smiles that shy smile. 

Crowley can’t help but smile, too. Just a small thing. A thin, waning crescent-moon on the sky of his face, dotted with freckle-stars. “Of course, angel,” he says.

To Aziraphale, it’s a promise. 

They walk back to the bookshop like that, hand in hand. Somewhere along the way, one of them twists their fingers so that they’re intertwined, palms pressing, a weaving of their very flesh. Neither of them would admit to doing it if asked.

When they arrive, it’s dark and quiet and moonlit. Aziraphale lights a lamp in a corner and fiddles with the liquor cabinet for a fair bit of time, clearly struggling to make a decision, before he disappears into the kitchen with a bottle or two and reappears a few minutes later with a pair of hot toddies, lemon and honey and all. 

The hot toddy is sufficient in putting Aziraphale to sleep in his favorite armchair not even a half hour later. They’re in the middle of a slowing debate about whether or not milk is acceptable to drink by itself (“It’sa-- a beverage, Crowley, it’s _perfectly_ fine if one wants to drink it in a glass with a meal.” “It’s absssolutely _not_ , angel. I’m a demon, but I’m not ssso evil as to think that drinking _milk_ by _itssself_ is _okay to do.”_ ) when Aziraphale nods off entirely, his head falling back onto the chair and a truly impressive snore exiting his pink-pink mouth. Crowley rouses from his own near-sleep state and blinks blearily, his exposed eyes focusing on the mishmash of pale colors that make up Aziraphale. 

Somewhere in his groggy mind, he remembers that Aziraphale has things like a flat and a bed and human bones and muscles that’ll be sore if he sleeps in his armchair. He’d be more comfortable upstairs. These things somehow convince him to peel himself off the couch and shake Aziraphale’s arm, trying to wake him. 

Aziraphale, however, had a rather busy day and does little more than snuffle at Crowley, who is becoming more awake by the moment. The demon turns and looks at the stairs up to Aziraphale’s flat, then back to the human in question. He makes a decision.

With a deep, deliberate breath, he sobers himself in one push, knowing that he can’t do what he’s about to do with any amount of alcohol in his veins. Then he gently stoops and hefts Aziraphale into his arms. Aziraphale hums at the motion and wraps his arms around Crowley’s neck, steadying himself there before he sleepily pushes his nose into the flesh at the junction of Crowley’s shoulder and throat. It takes an enormous amount of willpower for Crowley not to shiver. 

Crowley has never been a creature built for strength, but he’s still a demon. He can still lift Aziraphale like he’s nothing, even if it takes summoning a generous amount of power to assure he doesn’t send them both careening down the bookshop stairs and to the hardwood below. 

When he settles Aziraphale in his bed, miracling his pajamas (beige, tartan, soft) to replace his clothes (beige, tartan, only slightly less soft), Aziraphale makes a pleasant, mild sound that has Crowley grinning despite himself. He doesn’t really like to let himself look for more than a few seconds if he knows he’ll be caught, even if staring is encouraged for him in the first place-- even if _just looking_ is often a demonic action, whether through invasion or passivity. But right now-- much like this morning-- he lets himself look for a moment. Just a moment. 

He stays for two minutes on the dot and tells himself he does it to make sure that Aziraphale is sleeping soundly. To make sure he’s safe. In this scenario, he’s both the lawyer and the judge: he makes his case, gives his reasoning, his answers, but in the end, the gavel falls and he finds himself guilty.

He turns to leave and one of his feet lands on a squeaky floorboard. _Guilty, guilty, guilty._

“Crowley?” _Guilty, guilty, guilty._

“Yeah?” Crowley answers in a matched-whisper to Aziraphale’s. He decides there’s no use in trying to pretend he wasn’t there. _Guilty, guilty._

“C’mere,” Aziraphale murmurs, eyes heavy-lidded and half-shut, his face half-buried in his pillow. When Crowley obeys, Aziraphale reaches out and grabs the fabric of his t-shirt in a heavy, balled fist. With great effort, Aziraphale rolls his head to look at Crowley with both eyes. “Th’nk you for t’day, my dear.”

“It was my pleasure,” Crowley answers, perhaps a bit more sincerely than he’d like. 

“We’ll hafta do it again s’metime,” says Aziraphale, lamblike. 

“We should,” Crowley agrees. 

What comes next is a small silence in which Aziraphale’s eyes drift away from Crowley’s face, but they stay open, and his hand lingers. “Could you… that is to say… would...” he begins. 

When he doesn’t continue, Crowley lets one of his hands fall to the fist at his shirt, stroking a finger down the back of Aziraphale’s knuckles. He figures he’s allowed this. He hopes he’s allowed this. ( _Guilty, guilty._ ) “What is it?” 

Aziraphale thinks for a moment longer, then hums. “N’thin,” he breathes, and he looks to be in between sleep and wake. 

For a second, Crowley wonders if he should push it. He wants, _oh,_ how he wants to know what Aziraphale was about to say. He’d do anything. But despite his origins, his very nature, he doesn’t wish to disturb him. (He just wants to know if he was about to ask him to stay. If he was going to say something more. But the thing is, if he’d asked him to stay, Crowley wouldn’t have been able to say no. He would stay. He would stay. He can’t stay. 

_Guilty, guilty._ )

In a moment of willful optimism, he decides that if it’s important, it’ll come in time. 

Soon Aziraphale is snoring again, and Crowley removes the limp hand from his shirt and places a kiss on the back of his palm, barely touching, and tucks it up against Aziraphale. Makes sure he’s comfortable, cared for.

He leaves.

Before he locks up the bookshop with a set of miracles, he cleans up the back room, even though he wasn’t told to. After, he thinks about how he should have put the picnic basket back into Aziraphale’s storage closet or made sure the dishwasher got started. Then he remembers Aziraphale’s constant assurances that they’re in this together, that Crowley can forget. That he doesn’t want Crowley doing it all, despite the contract. That sharing is enough.

Aziraphale, regardless of their sealed bond of blood and soul and spit, insists that Crowley is allowed his freedom, but what is freedom to a being that exists to bring others what they want? What does freedom even mean to him? 

(It means that if he wanted, he could go back and take care of Aziraphale the way he wants to. But he wasn’t _told_ to do that, so something in him still insists that it’s the wrong thing to do.)

In order to keep himself from pulling a 180 and returning to the shop to do the (right? wrong?) thing, he walks mindlessly forward and doesn’t allow himself to look back. He takes his conflicted, confusion-addled mind with him.

He doesn’t ever make a plan for a destination, he just tries to get away. He isn’t sure what leads him back to the beach they had their picnic on. It’s probably nothing. If anything, it might be his subconscious, leading him in a familiar path or to a place with a brand-new happy memory associated with it. Either way, he finds himself strolling the shoreline in the dark. 

All the picnickers of the daytime are gone now. All that he can hear are the waves hitting the shore and the faint sounds of insects in the tall grass that limns the far edge of the sand, his own footsteps crunching on rocks and fine grain. Other than that, it’s silent. Just Crowley, the insects, the water, and the very stars he made. 

_We really need to stop meeting like this,_ he thinks, _my thoughts and I._ It’s no good to be a broody, lovesick shell of himself like this, but if he keeps tiptoeing around Aziraphale like he has been, he doesn’t think he has much of a choice in the matter. 

Like many times before in his existence, Crowley decides to make himself a mental list. This one contains what he wants. The list goes like this. 

\- To tell Aziraphale everything that’s going on with:

1\. their contract

2\. his heart

\- To save Aziraphale, to keep him safe.

\- To be with Aziraphale as much as he can and for as long as he is able.

\- To be allowed (by Hell or humanity) to love Aziraphale wholeheartedly and be loved in return.

It’s a selfish list, and he knows that. (But is not selfishness a sin? Is that not what he’s supposed to do, as a demon? He supposes it’s part of his duty, but then again, following his demonic duty has never truly led him anywhere he’s found satisfactory or morally upstanding.) He finds himself at another crossroads with this and decides to throw the entire list out-- to burn it, maybe, for good measure. 

He doesn’t want to be entirely selfish, so he decides he’ll just settle for saving Aziraphale. That’s the least selfish thing he could do on that list, with telling him about the contract-details in a close second. The others would require too much reaching, too much twisting-turning to be viable. No, this is what he decides he’ll commit to, for both their sakes-- he’ll save Aziraphale, and he’ll tell him what’s going on once he’s got a handle on how he’s going to do it. Once he has a lead. He doesn’t want to burden his love without the promise of salvation, of respite, so he’ll wait. And then he’ll save him, and then he’ll go.

After all, he would rather save Aziraphale and never get to see him again than be unable to save him at all. Than know he died because of something Crowley was responsible for. 

He can’t ask to make the stars and get to hold them, too. But maybe he can look from afar, where nothing he can do will cause any harm.

He isn’t looking forward to being alone again, though. The thought-- though he’s loath to admit it-- makes his eyes water at the brim, and he slides his glasses off so as not to get them wet. It’s not like anyone will see him here. He wipes at his face. He’d never thought himself as lonely, before. Something in him had always thought that humanity was admirable, but altogether wasn’t for him. He enjoyed his independence, he relished his moment alone. Now the idea just feels empty, somehow.

A fresh set of tears rolls on his skin. Demons aren’t _supposed_ to cry. They aren’t _supposed_ to love. This wasn’t _supposed_ to happen.

He hits a certain point on the beach and turns on his heel to walk back to the other side. It’s mere coincidence that the place he turns is the same place that he and Aziraphale had turned back earlier in the day during their stroll. While he heads back in the direction of the tide pools, he allows himself a moment to cry. To feel without self-pity.

Halfway back, a gleam in the sand stops him.

Curiosity has killed Crowley more than once, but he tracks nearer to the object anyway, knowing that satisfaction has made up for it every time in the past. He crouches above it and digs it out from where the sand and sea have tried to quickly bury it, and then it’s in his hand: Aziraphale’s pocket watch. The one he lost earlier today. He must’ve dropped it while they’d been walking, too distracted by their conversation to notice.

He wonders if he should take it back right now, or give it back later, or give in to that selfish part of him (one he’s already been beating back with a broom) that asks that maybe he keep it. Just for a while, just to remind him who he’s doing all this for.

_Who he’s doing this all for._ Another brimming and release of tears. _Who he’s doing this all for._ The man he loves. The man who may-or-may-not feel the same. The man who, despite his feelings, he will have to live without someday. The man he loves.

This wasn’t part of the contract. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’s crying on an inconsequential beach on an Earthen coast at the idea of losing a _human_ with a golden token from its so-short life tucked into his hand. One of his tears falls onto its shining, ticking face, and he watches it slide down the smooth surface and into the sand. It's so melodramatic, and it makes him mad. God damn it all. God damn Her for putting him here. God damn his emotions. 

Most of all, God damn himself for falling in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> our next chapter is a DOOZY, prepare yourself! it's currently around 10k by itself. HOO. i can't wait! 
> 
> your comments fuel me. come yell at me on twitter or instagram at @goosetooths!


	6. de facto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley go to the Ritz. Some confessions are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alrightalrightalright. this chapter is a doozy. not only is it 10k by itself, it's full of... PLOT. and CAMEOS. specifically, cameos from [Yasti from attheborder's fic, dearly departed,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20403217/chapters/48395410) and from [my own reverse!Aziraphale, Azmodeus,](https://www.instagram.com/p/CHbJXBbFp6H/) who has become so functionally separate from canon Aziraphale that he works in this universe just fine. also, i've updated the tags to reflect some future plot points!
> 
> this chapter has some specific CWs!: more death talk! some existential panic! a minor breakdown! and MORE canon-typical alcoholism! this is where the Minor Angst truly begins, but i would like to once again point out the 'happy ending' tag-- everything is going to be okay, i promise you!
> 
> our song for this chapter is [champagne year by st vincent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYar6H-vMto), and our lyrics are:
> 
> _it’s not a perfect plan,_   
>  _but it’s the one we’ve got._   
>    
>  _(i make a living telling people_   
>  _what they want to hear,_   
>  _and i can tell you:_   
>  _it’s gonna be a champagne year.)_

In the two months since the picnic (the bloody picnic, that _beautiful_ picnic) and his night on the beach, when he found that pocketwatch (the one in his pocket right now), Crowley has dedicated all his extra time and energy to looking for an out to his and Aziraphale’s contract. 

His first plan was to research it-- to gather all the occult books he knows of and really put his mind to it, to work out a solution using booksmarts. It became obvious rather quickly, however, that this wasn’t the method for him. He’s never been very good with books, or words, or putting abstract pieces together. After a couple weeks of hunting down various tomes and putting every inch of his intellect to work, he decided to pawn the books back off since it didn’t seem he’d be able to put them to proper use. 

(He’d’ve burned them, except that humans are rarely skilled enough to use them properly anyway. Plus, they aren’t really supposed to exist and only do because of slip-ups from Hell, so it’s a bargaining chip if he ever needs one. Right now he needs everything he can get. 

...But he doesn’t need those books.) 

After the books failed, he worked out a second and third* plan. The second plan? Word of mouth. He decided to track down any other contract demons he knew of and ask them what they’d do (or done) to get out of a contract. Some were more difficult to find than others— some he looked for and never found. 

(*The third plan? Well, let’s just say that he hoped— _hopes—_ it wouldn’t come to that.) 

He found his first contact-- an ex-contract demon called Yasti-- in an office in Hell, filing lust paperwork under Hastur for some goddamn reason. The beetle on her head twitched when he arrived and he immediately felt pinned and catalogued, much like a bug. When he’d asked his question, she’d tilted her head. “Why would you want to get out of a contract? It’s all about the souls nowadays, Crowley. Unless-- is it some sort of _sex thing?”_ she’d asked, interest sparking in her pit-black eyes.

Crowley, blushing, had vacated her office at the speed of lightning and hadn’t stuck around to hear the thunder. Yasti took this as her answer and started a new file.

There were a handful more that he found. Di had suggested something vague about killing the contracted, which Crowley quickly dismissed. Naoise had brushed him off, but Crowley wasn’t sure their input was going to be of value anyway. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen them do something other than lounge around in Hell.

He’d finally found Pip lingering anxiously around a portal to Hell somewhere in Soho, London. He’d asked her, but got little more than a few stuttered sentences and a wide-eyed look before she’d darted off. 

(During his encounter with another contact-- an important one, but another dead end nonetheless-- he’d felt the familiar pull of summoning and, circumstances being what they had been, he’d resisted it. Only later did he realise that he’d purposefully denied Aziraphale his presence via summoning for the first time _ever._ He only hoped, at the time, that that wouldn’t come back around to bite him.)

Azmodeus had been the closest he’d gotten to an answer, but it’d taken a whole week and a half just to find him. When he did, it was an accident: he was on the way home from talking to Pip when he spotted the purplish-grey ragdoll cat lingering around a flower shop, emanating an unruly occult aura. All its hair had stood on end for a moment as it heard Crowley approach. Then it turned to him, settled, and spoke in a gruff voice: “Oh, it’s just you.” 

“Azmodeus,” Crowley had greeted. “What’re you doing here?” 

“Could ask the same of you, Red,” Azmodeus responded colloquially, shifting from cat to human in two blinks.  
  
“Fair,” Crowley answered. “I’m not sticking around. I was looking for you, actually-- wanted to ask you a question.”

The corner of Azmodeus’s mouth quirked up in a smile and he leaned casually against the side of the flower shop. “Well, we both know that those always work out well for you.” 

Crowley rolled his eyes, having decided not to dignify him with a response. Crowley has known Azmodeus for thousands of years, and while his bark (meow?) is loud and sharp, his bite is nothing more than play. “I was wondering if you’ve ever been able to get out of a contract without— without killing the human.”

Azmodeus arched an eyebrow at him. “Isn’t that more your bag, serpent? I was in Nazareth when that one charge of yours was resurrected, I remember the report. It was hot gossip in Hell, too.” 

Crowley scoffed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Yeah, but that was an accident. And Jesus isn’t exactly around to bring this one back to life.” 

The Great Cat (who, throughout history, had been Crowley’s on-and-off drinking buddy, friendly rival, and-- for a short stint in the eighteen-hundreds-- friend-with-benefits, until an unfortunate disagreement in the early twentieth century had led to them parting ways) fell into his lean a little heavier and crossed one ankle over the other in a gesture of forced informality. 

“You can’t let that stop you, Red.” Azmodeus shrugged. “Jesus ain’t around, but the concept is the same. Let the soul leave your charge’s body, then bring it back.” 

Crowley’s mind was suddenly flooded with the idea of having to _kill_ Aziraphale. Perhaps not directly, he’d never be able to do that, but even through secondary means, it would be horrific at best. Just the _idea_ of him dead-- all pale, white, his fingers limply clutching, the blue of his eyes losing their luster, their reflection... 

(The chance of death had always been a factor, sure, but no other interaction had ever placed the image so concretely in his mind.) 

The mere notion of Crowley attempting to free him through force, or some ritual, or--... was too much for him to consider resurrection as something akin to a possibility. Too unpredictable. Crowley wouldn’t’ve been able to live with himself if something went wrong.

“S’not that easy, Azmodeus,” Crowley grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Humans’r fragile.” 

Azmodeus barked a single laugh, loud, raucous, gruff. “Ha! I’d say. But what does that matter, in the end? I mean, you want to be free of the contract-- if the resurrection doesn’t work, you’re free either way.” 

Crowley looked away from him, eyes searching for anything, _anything_ else to settle on. “It’s not about my freedom.” 

Azmodeus laughed again, but with less feeling now. “Then what’s it about?” 

Crowley pointedly did not answer. 

His non-answer, to Azmodeus, meant more than any string of words could have possibly meant to him. “Oh, if it’s not freedom-- it’s about the human’s life. Why?” 

“It doesn’t matter, Azmodeus. Thanks for your help.” Crowley turned on a heel to leave. 

“Wait, Red!” Azmodeus called out. 

Crowley didn’t stop walking. 

A few days after this encounter, his contact list nearly depleted, he decided he’d meet his last couple of contacts and brainstorm a little bit more before resorting to the third plan. There had to be another option. There _had_ to be.

\--

It’s nearly the day of the Ritz. Crowley shows up at the bookshop with a box of pastries and a cup of cocoa and tempts Aziraphale into taking a break. Aziraphale puts on a show of denying one, but ends up closing the shop and ushering Crowley into the back room anyway.

In the months since their picnic, Crowley has both delighted at their increasing closeness and paled at it. On one hand, it’s everything he wants-- everything he previously had no idea he wanted, before Aziraphale-- but on the other, he knows he’s keeping secrets. He feels them burning holes in his pockets, and he wants more than anything to come clean. But he knows, _oh,_ he _knows_ how it’ll hurt. 

He doesn’t want Aziraphale to hurt. That’s the whole _point_ of this. So he shoves his hands in his pockets as soon as Aziraphale takes his pastries and his cocoa and he pushes those secrets into their depths, feeling the acute sting of them against his skin.

For what it’s worth, though, the sting is overshadowed by Aziraphale’s happy sounds as he eats a perfectly-baked, squishy cinnamon roll and sips at his cocoa (with just enough whip to be extra-sweet, but not enough to be cloying, sticky).

“Do you want any, dear?” he asks, proffering a small chunk of roll for Crowley with an expectant look on his face, and fuck, Crowley can’t _not._ He grins a teeny bit and leans over to pluck it from his fingers. 

Something about this free give-and-take makes those burning secrets burn a little hotter, more insistent, and the sweetness of the cinnamon roll does little to distract him from that. 

As far as secrets go, Aziraphale had revealed one of his own recently: he’d always wanted to learn how to braid hair. 

Not to say that he doesn’t _sort of_ know how. When he was small, his Aunt Elisheva-- his mother, as far as he was concerned at the time, as far as he’s concerned _now_ , even-- had long, beautiful silver hair. She taught Aziraphale how to braid it, if only to help her as she got older and her arthritis made it more difficult to do it herself. But it’s been a long time since then, and he’s missed the slow, methodical twining and push and pull of hair in his hands. As well, he only ever learned the most basic of maneuvers from her, and he’s always thought that the more intricate braids had a certain appeal to them. He wants to learn, he’d expressed.

“And I’ve not got enough hair to braid on my own, as you can see,” he explained with a gesture when he had originally divulged this to Crowley a few weeks back. Crowley just nodded, looking at that cloud-fluff of hair and thinking about Aziraphale’s fingers dutifully commanding his copper locks into whatever configuration he fancied. He’d like that very much, he thought, and he said so at the time.

The idea of it doesn’t compare to the real thing, though, as he’s now learned. As soon as Aziraphale has finished his pastries and is well on his way to being done with his cocoa, he beckons Crowley to sit on the floor between his legs so that he can have a go at his hair. He’d been eyeing a lovely waterfall braid on ‘the internets’ for a good while, and he’s feeling confident today.

They’ve done this a few times now. Crowley will come over to Aziraphale’s armchair, get comfortable, and let Aziraphale bring his visions to fruition while he himself scrolls meaninglessly on his phone and tries to ignore the sensations that having his hair yanked around sends directly from his scalp to… other places. (Aziraphale doesn’t know that bit, and Crowley is very good at ignoring things.) 

There’s one thing that’s very pointedly different about today, though, and Aziraphale is about to find that out. 

Crowley pulls his sunglasses off with a _fwip_ and shucks off his jacket in one sinuous movement. As he undoes his long, red ponytail, Aziraphale gawks openly at the silhouette of a snake that now unravels across Crowley’s neck, chest, and right arm. Its head rests neatly in the divot of his collarbone, a simple but sinister serpent’s face with a flickering tongue. Crowley throws his jacket over the arm of the couch, then looks to Aziraphale.

In seeing the look of awe and confusion on Aziraphale’s face, Crowley freezes, suddenly self-conscious.“What?” 

“I may be mistaken, dear, but last time I saw you, I don’t believe you had-- that,” Aziraphale says, gesturing broadly to Crowley. 

Crowley, as though having forgotten about the way that his upper body is now sliced by curving lines of mauve and red, looks down at himself in puzzlement. He’d been aware of the way that his marking looks now, he’d just been distracted. “Oh!” He exclaims. “I-- uh-- I did, actually, it’s just usually up here.” He points to his right temple with a single, black-tipped finger. 

Aziraphale couldn’t possibly know how to respond to that. “What?” he asks after several seconds’ silence. 

Crowley drops his hand and looks at the ground. He thinks about how to talk about this without revealing that Aziraphale’s compliment of said tattoo had been the direct cause of the tattoo’s sudden change in configuration. 

“I, uh,”--he begins, then changes direction--“I’ve had ‘im since I Fell, you know that, and it’s-- he’s-- he’s a demonic marking, I guess, but he’s also a bit sentient. I can wear him as I please, change 'im up whenever I want to. I’ve had him on my temple for-- for aeons, I suppose. Just thought it was time for a change, that’s all. Thought I’d try this.” As he ends his explanation with a mumble, he plops down between Aziraphale’s legs, facing away from him so that he doesn’t have to see Aziraphale’s reaction. 

“Ah,” Aziraphale responds simply. No-- okay, that can’t be all. “You’re— It’s-- _he’s_ quite beautiful,” comes his amendment. It’s an understatement, but he doesn’t really know what else to say. He’s too busy looking at how the snake coils up and over the freckled expanse of Crowley’s shoulder, well-muscled and thin. Then he’s distracted by, once again, the thought of _Crowley_ and _between my legs_ in the same sentence. 

Well.

“Nn-- ah. I. Thank you,” Crowley stutters in response to the praise. He turns his head down, looking into his lap and hoping that that’s effective in concealing his blush.

“You’re welcome, dear.” Aziraphale rolls his shirtsleeves up in preparation for the work he’s about to do. If one were to look closely at his forearm, one would see the fading remnants of a conversation that took place not a half an hour ago-- ‘ _popping by, r u free?’ ‘Only if you’re bringing a bribe.’ ‘bastard. cocoa or tea?’--_ but only the two of them would look so close. 

It takes a bit of time for Aziraphale to get the hang of it, but once he does, his waterfall braid begins to go very smoothly. As with all braids and other such repetitive, meticulous processes, he finds himself wandering in his thoughts for a majority of the task.

Said thoughts wander, rather unpleasantly, to a focus of his consternation for the past few days: an occasion a week or so back on which, like never before, he’d tried to summon Crowley and _failed._ He’d tapped thrice, and nothing had happened at all. At first, he thought perhaps that something had happened to Crowley and regretted that neither of them are the type that require things like cellular phones or other non-supernatural modes of communication. 

A couple of hours later, his worry having taken him down an altogether unsavory, desperate path, he tried to summon Crowley again, but this time he _succeeded._ Nothing was wrong with him at all. This caused Aziraphale, the manifestation of both the utmost chill and the most raging ever-possible anxiety, to make one conclusion and one conclusion only: he had definitely, most certainly, done something wrong. Something _so_ wrong that Crowley had _refused_ to be summoned by him. 

He just couldn’t figure out what in _Hell_ he could have done. 

Regretfully, he’d thought about it a rather long time. His train of thought had derailed rather spectacularly and taken him far past what might be called rational conjecture and rather deep into worrying. One might argue that his worrying was completely for nothing. Whether or not that’s true is exactly what Aziraphale wants to know when, as he screws up the braid three-fourths in because of his shaking hands, he asks: “Dear boy, have I done something to upset you?” 

Crowley tenses up immediately. Aziraphale is scared for a moment that his fears are on the brink of confirmation, but then Crowley turns around furiously, heedless of Aziraphale’s hands in his hair. His eyes are intense and pinning. “Why would you think that?” 

Under Crowley’s sun-lamp of a gaze, he feels like all his worrying was painfully convoluted, but he goes on anyway. “Last-- last week. I summoned you and you didn’t come,” he explains, looking at his hands. “I thought perhaps I’d-- that I’d done something wrong.” 

Crowley looks at him with wide eyes, the cogs in his head turning for a moment. “You’ve not done anything wrong, Aziraphale, you’re perfect,” he blurts, wanting more than anything to assure Aziraphale against his worries. 

At this declaration of sorts, they both flush hot red. Crowley turns back around in a flash and Aziraphale wordlessly starts braiding his hair again. 

In ten minutes, the braid is done, and it’s lovely, and neither of them have spoken, even to ask the questions they really want to. 

—

_OCTOBER 13, 2019_

It’s the day of the Ritz, and Aziraphale can’t stop shaking. 

Every possible emotion he could be feeling is happening inside him right now, he thinks. Excitement, terror, nervousness, elation, (love, love, love)-- it’s all swirling in a beautiful, horrid, complicated mishmash of sensation. 

Aziraphale, being who he is, allows this to manifest only very subtly— in the fold-and-unfold of his hands as he counts the money in the till, in the trembling of his fingers as he changes into his suit, as he pulls his bowtie taut and observes himself in the mirror. The gold filigree cherubs around the edge of it taunt him; in looking at them he feels reminded of the whirlwind of emotions stirring inside his head. He hears a familiar voice, all milk and honey. _Angel, angel, angel._

He turns from the mirror and hurries downstairs to wait for Crowley, away from his honey-slick, disembodied voice. Away from the thoughts. 

Honestly, that voice has been taking up a huge amount of his thoughts as of late. Crowley usually has a rather large occupancy in his mind, truth be told, but lately it’s seemed as though Aziraphale simply can’t shake him off. Even when he isn’t around, Aziraphale indulges in thoughts of him without ever meaning to. 

One thought, specifically: _You’ve not done anything wrong, Aziraphale, you’re perfect you’re perfect you’re perfect._

_What?_

For months, Aziraphale has indulged a private wish that somehow, in some way, Crowley might feel what he feels. In the dark of night, when he’s lonely or alone or _both, both,_ he wonders what it would be like if he loved and was loved in return. 

As those two words spilled forth from Crowley’s mouth with such unabashed conviction and an immediate flush of blood under alabaster skin, Aziraphale thought for a moment that his wish wasn’t just a wish anymore. 

He’s been chewing on that for weeks. 

Tonight might be the night, he thinks as he paces the shop, straightening perfectly-straight spines and smearing dust off of dustless shelves. Tonight he might tell Crowley how he feels. 

He’d do it gently, of course. He’d take his hand and lay the contents of his heart out on the table with the meal, and he’d let Crowley choose what he wants to hear, what he wants to keep. That’s the important part. He’d need to make sure Crowley knows that it’s his choice. All of it is his choice. He can hear Aziraphale out and decide he never wants to see him again, contract be damned, and that’s— that’s _okay._

(Who is he kidding? It’s not, it’s not, it’s not— Aziraphale thinks that if Crowley leaves him alone at his table with his hors d'oeuvres and his feelings, Aziraphale will leap into the sea.

Not really, of course, he’s human, he’ll continue on to the best of his ability— but his heart, he knows, would drown. For the depth of this love surpasses the Marianas, and without light at the surface to swim towards, Aziraphale can’t know that he’ll make it. 

He thinks the pressure and the throb of the water might subsume him. Lightless, air stolen, empty in the abyssal cold, he’d let the current take him.)

But it’s no big deal. He honestly, really would be happy with whatever Crowley chose. Even if he doesn’t choose him. He’d be fine. He’d make himself be fine.

At this point, Aziraphale is pacing a divot into the hardwood floor with his overthinking. He huffs, stops in his tracks, and tries to recenter himself.

Twenty minutes later, Crowley pulls up to the bookshop in the Bentley to find Aziraphale half finished with an overly-milky tea and totally not reading the novel in his hands. He starts when he hears the door chime and nearly throws his book across the room. 

“Oi, angel,” Crowley calls out, rounding the threshold into the back room. “You ready?”

And oh, then Aziraphale looks up and sees him, and he’s so lovely it almost hurts. All dressed in a low cut, androgynous suit; something soft and dark plum-red and covered in rosettes, and— is that velvet? His red hair is tied into a haphazard, artfully messy bun at his nape, and he stands a few inches taller than usual thanks to the chunky heels on his feet. He’s _gorgeous._

(Aziraphale, in his daze, completely misses Crowley’s parallel awestruck gandering. The demon takes in Aziraphale’s soft, tamed curls, his suede-and-tweed-and-velvet ensemble, his pale colors and soft curves and the gold jewelry that highlights it all, and he’s smitten all over again.) 

They meet one another’s flushed gazes and both look away, mentally grasping at conversational straws with which to cover their stumbling. 

“You look great, angel,” Crowley chokes, and _hey, whoa, that’s definitely not the recovery he was looking for._

Aziraphale gets out of his armchair and smooths the wrinkles from his trousers. “As do you, dear.” He approaches, then plucks at the sleeve of Crowley’s suit jacket. “Is this custom-tailored? It’s quite handsome.” 

“Don’t need a tailor when you’ve got miracles,” Crowley responds, miming a snap. He offers an arm for Aziraphale to take, and he’s all-too pleased when it’s taken without hesitation. 

“Are they still miracles if you’re a demon?” Aziraphale asks in jest. 

Crowley scoffs, beginning to lead them out. He’s way past the need for offense in the face of Aziraphale’s curiosity. “Is it still croquet if it’s raining? It’s all the same, angel, Fall or no Fall.” 

“You’d think they’d be called something else.” 

“They’re still called miracles, I don’t know what to tell you.” 

“Not even— not even _demonic_ miracles?” Aziraphale steps into the Bentley after Crowley opens the door for him. 

“Just miracles, as hard as that is to believe. Besides, ‘demonic miracles’ just doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way.” The door shuts; Crowley rounds the car and gets in. In the time that it takes him to do so, Aziraphale has already eyed the entire interior of the cab and has come away with questions. 

“I didn’t know you had a car,” Aziraphale says levelly. “Is this also a _demonic miracle_ , or did you-- did you perform some sort of _hellish act_ to get it?” he asks, wiggling in his seat just at the implication that something naughty had happened for this car to come into Crowley’s ownership. 

Crowley scoffs. “I bought it,” he answers anticlimactically, slipping the key into the ignition. His hands curl around the steering wheel, falling back into place where they’d been not five minutes prior.

(It’s still warm, the rubber still sticky with sweat. He’d spent his entire drive here nervous out of his mind-- not just for his-- his _date_ with Aziraphale, but also because of… of all he needs to say. He really should come clean, not just about the contract, but also about his _feelings._ But he’s-- he’s not sure how to even _begin_ to do that. He wants to say something-- maybe tonight, while there’s all this _romance_ in the air, but...

He’s not sure he can.

So he’d stewed in it the whole way here, and now the ghost of his anxiety lingers on the steering wheel, in the leather of the driver’s seat.) 

“Bought it?” Aziraphale asks, interrupting his recollection.

“1941, I want to say. No-- wait-- 1933.” He starts the car and pulls off the curb. 

1933\. The memory of reading about Crowley getting this car in his book hits him like a wave. “Oh, quite. Well, it’s in remarkable condition for its age.” 

“I do my best to keep her in good shape,” Crowley agrees, shrugging gently and doing his best to keep a calm air regardless of the fact that the sight of Aziraphale in his passenger seat is making him feel all fluttery inside. “Feel free to put some music on. I’ve got some CDs in the glovebox.” 

Aziraphale pops the glovebox open dutifully, pulling a few out to examine. Most of them are bands he’s only really heard of in passing. Music had never really caught his fancy like books had, and he’d always found himself listening mostly to the old classical vinyls he inherited from his aunt. Queen and The Velvet Underground go right over his cherubic little head, but there are things to his taste within them, as well. He selects a mild looking disk that claims to hold a selection of ABBA hits, but is blindsided when Queen’s ‘Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy’ plays instead. _Blares_ , actually. 

Crowley scrambles to turn the volume down and gives Aziraphale an apologetic look. “She’s got a mind of her own,” he says as way of explanation, leaving Aziraphale only slightly less puzzled. “Maybe no music.” He’s got a light flush on his face, and in the South Downs sunset with fresh street lights highlighting his sharp cheekbones, he looks beautiful-- Aziraphale isn't concerned with the music, anyway. 

The drive is nearly a full hour and three quarters, so after a good few minutes of healthy banter, they fall into companionable silence. They’ve been friends for nearly eight months, you see-- companionable silence is easy for them by now. There isn’t a day that Aziraphale doesn’t believe it to be a little wonder, to be so comfortable with another being. 

When Crowley hits a busier thoroughfare, though, his driving becomes a bit more... aggressive. 

“Dear, do you think you could”-- Crowley passes a car going eighty-something on the A3, honking as he goes--“slow down, just a touch?” 

“Angel, you have to be forceful if you want to get anywhere. Besides, our reservation is for seven-thirty. That’s forty-five minutes from now.” 

“And we’ve only got a half hour to go. Please, could you just slow down, just a bit.” 

Crowley rolls his eyes, but slows to a modest seventy-five. “Where do you think the term ‘speed demon’ came from, Aziraphale?” 

With an affronted gasp, Aziraphale turns to look at Crowley, his hand still glued to the assist grips on the roof as though his life depends on it. “You don’t mean…?”

Crowley smirks, looking at Aziraphale over the rims of his glasses. “I do mean.” 

This, as is natural, leads to a discussion about Crowley’s influence on traffic law, which segues nicely into a retelling of how Crowley meddled with the M25 so much that it took on the appearance of the dread sigil Odegra. Aziraphale thinks this is hilarious, naturally, but privately also thinks it explains quite a lot. 

Before either of them know it, they pull up to the front of the Ritz, just in time. 

Crowley sends the Bentley off with the valet (and with an ominous, darkly breathed threat about getting scratches in her paint that Aziraphale pretends he doesn’t notice) and they go inside. “Anthony J Crowley,” says the demon when they approach the hostess. She leads them into the restaurant, menus in hand, glancing at the odd couple the entire way. 

“Anthony?” Aziraphale asks, fiddling with his cufflinks nervously. 

“Yeah. Did you think I didn’t have a first name?” 

“Doesn’t seem like standard issue.” 

“That’s because it isn’t. I’ve been on Earth a long while, angel, people were going to start noticing if I didn’t give myself a first name.” 

“What does the J stand for?”

“Nn— well, it’s. It’s just a J, really.” 

“Mm,” Aziraphale hums. “Well, I think the name is lovely. Suits you nicely.” 

Crowley flushes and fixes his eyes on the hostess’ back, feeling said tattoo move about his skin unconsciously as if anxious-slash-excited in his stead. “Nn-- gh, yeah, thank you.”

It’s just then that the hostess rounds a table and sets their menus on it. “Here you are, sirs, your waiter will be with you in just a moment.” 

Crowley pulls Aziraphale’s chair out for him (and if they were in any other place, he’d swoon at that) but it doesn’t occur to him to sit down just yet-- he’s much too struck by the glory that _is_ the Ritz. Furthermore, the glory that is the _table_ Crowley managed to get for them. It’s clearly one of the crown jewels of the establishment; it’s out of the way from other diners, on its own platform with a crystalline lighting fixture dangling above it. A trio of candles flickers in the center of the table, casting the whole scene in a golden light. Aziraphale is, quite frankly, completely speechless. 

“You gonna sit, angel, or are you just gonna gawk?” Crowley asks, a wry smile on his face. It’s not as though he isn’t thoroughly enjoying watching Aziraphale look on at the restaurant in wonder; quite the opposite, really. The reverence and excitement writ on his face is a reminder of just how much Crowley loves him. Just how much he wants to put that look on his face for as long as he can.

(It’s easy to forget, in this moment, about the outside forces that are at play here-- about the winds of fate, the hand of death. Easy to forget about how little time is left.) 

“Oh, of course, my dear, apologies,” Aziraphale rushes to say, seating himself quickly and snapping Crowley from his thoughts. “I got a bit caught up in it all.” 

“I know you did,” Crowley chuckles before seating himself. Their chairs are arranged nontraditionally at the round table: rather than across from one another, they’ve been placed side-by-side. Intimate, though neither of them draw attention to it. “It’s hard not to, isn’t it?” 

“Quite,” Aziraphale responds simply, still ogling the brilliance of the Great Room. He seems to begin to put sentences together a few times to describe how he’s feeling, but never gets around to it. Instead, he looks at Crowley, his eyes vaguely wet, and whimpers out a painfully sincere “thank you.” 

At this point, Crowley is nearly ready to cry as well, so it’s lucky that their waiter appears to take their orders. 

They end up ordering all their courses at once, if only to keep themselves from debating about what to get for the entirety of the meal. Crowley is entirely aware that he won’t eat more than a few bites, so he orders Aziraphale’s second choices for everything-- not that he says as much. When they get to the dessert portion of the order, Crowley snags Aziraphale’s menu from him, saying that he’s ‘got that part covered, angel.’ 

By the time the food comes out-- ballotine of duck liver and crab norfolk, both artfully served-- they’ve moved past restaurant-ogling and into their usual, relaxed conversation. Exchanges between them— even at the beginning, when it was difficult to navigate the river-straits between one of them and the other— have always been easy. Always leisurely, meandering, simple.

Tonight’s conversation has a moment where that is not true. A turning point. The second course comes out— cornish turbot, fillet of lamb— and while they’re working their way through it, there’s a fraction of time where the mood turns. 

Aziraphale, looking back, could have pinpointed it. Could have stopped it. He didn’t, but isn’t that how hindsight always is? It’s as though he’s the main character in a book he’d prefer to be reading, not starring in; he believes, somehow, that if he were an onlooker rather than the man in his shoes, he’d be able to pick out the mistake. He would know what he did wrong. He would be able to stop it. 

If he were able to figure it out, he’d eventually come to realize that it was the moment he mentioned the spring. “There’s a shop in London that has the best flowers I’ve ever seen, my dear,” he’d said, “I’d like to take you, I know you’d love it. Oh, but we ought to wait until the spring, they’re better then.” 

Crowley went from blissfully following Aziraphale’s train of thought to pouring himself another glass of wine, mouth drawn taut, eyes looking at anything but the man next to him. As if there’s something he’s not saying, something he’s neglecting to mention. Something he’s holding back. 

Back in the now, Aziraphale looks at him amongst the splendor of the room and wonders what just happened. 

It’s not as if Aziraphale hasn’t been able to _tell_ Crowley is beating around some sort of bush. He’s just never been one to press people (or, well, _demons_ ) into speaking against their will about things they’d rather not speak of. He’d long-decided that if there was a reason to be worried, he’d know. That if Crowley isn’t saying something, there’s good reason for that, and he shouldn’t press. _One_ of those things is true. 

Crowley refills his glass and can see the working machinations of Aziraphale’s thoughts. He feels the tension of the moment stretched between them, and although Aziraphale himself doesn’t know why he asks it, Crowley can see it coming when he says, “Dear boy, what’s— what’s going on?”

The waiter arrives to take their plates and let them know that dessert is coming, and it gives Crowley an extra few seconds to prepare. It’s not enough. 

“Nothing,” Crowley responds, clearly lying. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. We were so at ease, dear, and then— then something changed. I can’t tell if I messed it up, or if there’s something you’re— you’re trying to deflect, but…” 

Crowley deflates. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Aziraphale.” 

“Then what— what happened? What’s going on? Please, Crowley, don’t think I can’t tell. There’s— there’s something you’re dodging, and it’s making me anxious.” 

This isn’t the moment for this, but it also isn’t the moment for another nonchalant brushing off of Aziraphale’s worry. He’s fiddling with the tablecloth and looking at Crowley with _such_ fear, _such_ anxiety. 

Under the infinite yet infinitesimal pressure of Aziraphale’s stare, Crowley breaks. He doesn’t know why he does it; now isn’t the place or the time. It’s not the right moment. But in his defense-- will there ever be? “Yeah— you’re. You’re right,” he cedes, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “I’ll tell you. Just… don’t freak out.”

“Not exactly comforting, that sentence.” Aziraphale looks down with a weak smile, twisting the tablecloth further. 

“It’s not. I know. It’s…” Crowley takes a breath, staring into his glass as if it holds the key to the conversation. It doesn’t. “It’s just— I was wrong. About the terms of the contract. There’s-- no good way to break the news.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathes, his shoulders falling. “Well, that’s not so bad. What exactly were you wrong about?” He mentally tallies their original deal-- one soul in exchange for a lifetime of companionship. As long as his life stretches, Crowley will be by his side. 

“Well, I--” Crowley starts, choking on it. “You understand, I haven’t had a contracted human since three hundred years before Rome fell.”

“...Yes.” 

“I… I hadn’t had a reason to brush up on regulation in a long time, so after we made our deal I looked into it. It turns out that-- that the new standard demonic contract doesn’t last the rest of the human’s lifespan like it used to. It-- it…” He takes a breath. He very rarely feels nauseous, but right now he’s inclined to ask for a doggy bag. He meets Aziraphale’s gaze for a fleeting second and the way he’s looking over-- with anticipation, fear, anxiety, confusion-- is the thing that pushes him to continue. “They last a year. At the end of which the human dies and their soul is forfeited to Hell immediately.” 

Aziraphale keeps looking at him, keeps making eye contact, but says nothing. He’s processing what this means for him, for Crowley-- in the end, it’s only a minute that passes, but it feels like fucking _eons._

The waiter arrives and places a plate in front of the silent pair. 

It’s a single slice of chocolate amaretto crêpe cake with two forks. Specially made. 

“A year,” Aziraphale breathes, breaking the silence. He sounds as uneasy as Crowley is, but is otherwise not outwardly emotional, which only serves to unsettle Crowley further. “That’s not very long. How much-- how-- how many more months do I have?” 

“Four.” Crowley deflates a bit, unwilling to keep further secrets and feeling lighter (and yet somehow much, much _heavier_ ) the fewer he has.

“Oh,” he shivers. “That’s much less than I thought.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes go glassy, distant. He wordlessly picks up one of the forks and eats a bite of the cake, evidently still processing. Crowley isn’t sure if he should talk-- if that would make it better or worse-- but he wants to tell Aziraphale everything. Now that he’s begun to come clean, he wants to go all the way. 

Before he can continue, though, Aziraphale asks another question. “How will I die?” It’s only a few words, a very simple question, but it has a million layers of meaning. _Will it hurt? Will I be alone? Where will I go afterward?_ It’s all the questions every human has about the end of their life, but magnified a thousand fold.

Crowley swallows. “I’m... I’m actually supposed to be the one to kill you, at the end. I won’t, though. Never have before, not going to start now. ‘M a demon, not a murderer.” Crowley looks into his lap, twists his serviette guiltily. 

Visions of his own death flash before Aziraphale’s eyes. He screws his eyes shut and wills them away. “If you won’t-- then… how…?” Will it happen by accident, then? Or will the knowledge of his impending death drive him to some sort of madness? How does one proceed with a scheduled death? 

Somehow sensing Aziraphale’s inner turmoil, Crowley assuages his fears. “Yeah, uh-- there’s this. _Thing._ Humans’ve called it tons of names. Azrael, Angel of Death. Santa Muerte. Thanatos.” He pauses a moment to look off somewhere in the middle distance. “In Hell, we call it The Custodian. Not sure what it prefers, really.”

The idea that it’s a being with _preferences_ is almost wilder than the concept of it altogether. Aziraphale takes another bite of cake. “And you didn’t tell me this earlier because--” 

“I didn’t know,” Crowley rushes to admit. “Like I said. When we made our deal, I didn’t know. Then, a couple months ago, I asked a friend of mine, because-- because I…” he wavers, rolling over confessions in his head and deciding, ultimately, that now is not the time, “I’d grown fond of you. I couldn’t remember how things were supposed to go. I wanted to know so that I’d-- we’d--...” _So that I’d know how long I get to be with you._ Crowley exhales _\--_ “that’s when I-- when I found out. I kept it a secret because I didn’t want to tell you without having a solution already in mind.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale hums hollowly in reply, speechless, his stare a bit more than vacant. He still has a fork in his hand and he uses it to take another bite, small and grounding. “That makes sense.” 

When he speaks, he’s so quiet, and yet Crowley feels like he’s been punched in the fucking chest. He searches for words-- _a_ word, anything that’ll make this better. “I know, and-- and this-- this is my fault, Aziraphale, really, and I--”

“Dear, no, it’s not your fault. Like you said, you didn’t know.” 

“But it is! And I’m-- I’m going to fix it, I am,” the demon insists, leaning up and out of his chair a bit in his asseveration. “I have a plan and everything. I mean-- I _will_ have a plan. I’ve-- we’ve still got options yet. I’m going to figure something out, Aziraphale, I swear it to you. I’ll find a way.” He’s as serious as anything, and his gaze is intense on Aziraphale. He conveniently ignores his distinct lack of options; in this moment, he’s never been surer of anything than he is his will to save Aziraphale’s life.

Aziraphale can see some spark of this, some flare, but faced with death as he is, he finds his trust is overshadowed by his fear. “I’m sure you will, my dear, I have perfect faith in you.” He pauses, looking down at his hand, trembling, then speaks again. “Is-- is there any way I can help? I’d like to-- I _want_ to.”

The intensity in Crowley’s eyes returns with a fervor. “No. Aziraphale, I know you do, but you can’t. It’s-- angel-- it’s all very dangerous, and-- and _occult_ , and I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if something happened to you. Please don’t get involved. I’ll-- I can do this. Please.” 

Something changes in Aziraphale’s gaze and Crowley can’t pinpoint what it is. It’s like a light goes out or a window shuts, but to the left-- it’s something he can’t figure out, but he doesn’t like it, all the same. He wishes he could undo it, but to undo it would be to give Aziraphale permission to muddle with the occult in order to save his own life, and-- and that’s unthinkable, to Crowley. It could mean worse than losing his life or his soul. 

He settles for not knowing. 

“Okay,” Aziraphale agrees, swallowing. “I won’t.” 

“Thank you,” Crowley says, and he means it, whether Aziraphale’s fingers are crossed or not.

\--

There’s no real way to recover the dinner after that, but they both give it their best effort. In the end, they leave with full stomachs, restless minds, and a takeaway box full of crepe cake not long after the moon has found its place in the sky.

Crowley, as could be assumed, is _incredibly_ anxious. Really, the only thing that can trump his anxiety is his worry for Aziraphale, and the toxic cocktail of both of those things assures that he’s stealing glances at him constantly for the first half-hour of the drive, his fingers clenched on the wheel, his foot on the pedal assuring they go no more than a modest sixty-five. 

Not that much changes, though-- the entire time, Aziraphale just looks out the window at the passing landscape silently. He’ll occasionally grip with increasing force at the vintage leather of the seats, and Crowley eventually decides to lay a hand on the seat between them-- not thinking Aziraphale will take it, per say, moreso just… offering what he has. What he can give right now that he hasn’t already given.

Even with all the static, the feelings, it’s too quiet. It’s just the purr of the car’s engine, the click of the turn signal, the crunch of the gravel. The radio isn’t even on. It’s a horrid contrast to their earlier drive, which was so easy, so lively and raucous. Here in a silence that Crowley can’t help but hear, it’s hard not to stew in all the ways he ruined things and all the ways he wants to make it up to Aziraphale. 

(If only he knew how to do that.) 

Aziraphale, for his part, is remarkably far from the point of breaking for a man who just found out that he’s meant to die in four months. He had a good life. He’s lived, hasn’t he? Not just survived, or however that saying goes. Owned a shop, traveled, had a good many friends-- he’s contracted a demon, for pity’s sake! How many can say that they did that?

Well-- probably not a great many, he thinks, if this is how their contracts end.

He shivers again at that. How they _end._ He doesn’t want to think about it, but he finds it rather unavoidable in the end. His thoughts move to and fro to the whim of its gravitational pull like a pendulum, swinging away, but always swinging back.

Always swinging back. 

It isn’t until about an hour in that it breaks him.

They’re almost back to the welcoming embrace of the countryside when he starts to cry, and they’re booking it down a rural road by the time Crowley notices. Aziraphale didn’t want him to, really-- _he already feels so guilty, what’s the use in making it worse? In making him pity me?_ \-- but Crowley is attentive and there’s a certain ineffability in the air. A sniffle lights up Crowley’s awareness and he feels a hot, sharp spike of panic crest through him. 

At the same time that he says, “Aziraphale?”, his voice all worry, his eyes darting over to check on him (only to see him stricken, weeping--), Aziraphale finally lets himself take the hand Crowley’s had on the seat between them this entire time, a silent, steadfast offer of comfort.

Aziraphale grasps Crowley’s hand like a life preserver, his tears rolling quick and silent off his cheeks and onto his olive green lapels, his pale blue collar. (A memory of what this night should have been: all extravagance, all fleeting touches and delicious food, all eyes held in gaze for too long. Warmth. The flickering of candles between them, a brushed hand, a footed bill.

Instead, Aziraphale is crying in his car.)

Crowley almost asks _what’s wrong,_ his eyes snapping back and forth between the crystal-catch of tears on Aziraphale’s face and the blur of the road. He pulls over, turning in his seat to face Aziraphale, giving him his full attention. He does _not_ ask _what’s wrong,_ because it’s _obvious._ What’s wrong is that Aziraphale is facing his fucking mortality. Crowley exhales, brow pinched in worry. “Aziraphale--” 

“Who’s going to-- going to take my shop?” he asks, fully rhetorical. “I don’t have staff, it’s just me, no one could-- there’s no one to take it.” He sobs. “It’ll just-- it’ll just be cleared out, put up for-- for _sale,_ or--” 

Crowley, unsure how far their boundaries go in terms of comfort (and unsure of comfort in general, really-- when’s he last done this? When’s he had to?) and wanting Aziraphale to call the shots, simply flips the hand in Aziraphale’s grasp and brings his other to meet it, effectively clasping Aziraphale’s one hand between both of his. He rubs along his knuckles, trying, himself, not to shake. 

Now able to see the full path of his spiral before him, Aziraphale continues venting and scoots closer to Crowley, just a bit, still staring through the windshield. “--I-- I-- who will take care of all my books? Never took an apprentice, so they’ll just be-- be _pawned off, or--_ or given away, or--” He doesn’t want to think about where, exactly, they’ll end up, what his estate sale would be like. All those priceless books, going who knows where?

Aziraphale rubs at his face with one thick palm, scrubbing some tears away. Crowley wants nothing more than to hold him, not for his own want. “Is this why you’re supposed to have children? To take care of that, so that you aren’t some lonely old sod who-- who dies alone with his things? So you have someone to take those things? Oh, Lord”-- he presses his face into his free palm--“I don’t even have a will! How will I--”

This is the point at which Crowley _also_ becomes aware of the path of Aziraphale’s spiraling and endeavors to knock him out of it. He lets go of Aziraphale’s hand in favor of grabbing his face-- not softly, but not rough. Firm, gentle-- and physically pulls him from his descent.

“Aziraphale,” he says firmly. “You don’t need a will. You aren’t going to die. I’m not going to _let_ you die.” He pauses, keeping eye contact with Aziraphale, letting them both feel the gravity of his words. Aziraphale blinks, letting stray tears fall, and Crowley keeps going. “Actually, I think that if you _do_ die, I’m going to _personally_ find your soul in Hell and drag you back to the plane of the living, because I want you here with me, not _dead,_ okay?” 

Aziraphale blinks again. More tears spill, but it’s different somehow. “Okay.” 

“Good,” Crowley breathes. “And-- and Aziraphale, I’m sorry. I really am. I realize I-- I don’t think I said it before. But I’m sorry. This is my fault-- my mess. Let me fix it.” 

What with the emotion, neither of them register the way that they’ve become entangled in one another. Their closeness. Crowley cradles Aziraphale’s face, Aziraphale grasps gently at his wrist, his suit jacket. It only becomes evident when Aziraphale barely has to move to pull Crowley into an embrace-- the first one they’ve dared. “It’s okay. I forgive you, my dear, even though it isn’t your fault. It’s-- it’s _our_ mess, alright? We made it together.” 

This is when Crowley finally starts to cry, as well. His lip wobbles and he pulls Aziraphale tighter to himself, burying his face in the crook of his shoulder, breathing in his all-too-human scent. “Yeah, alright,” he whimpers, wondering what he did right-- or wrong, or at all-- to put Aziraphale in his path.

They sit in relative silence for a few minutes, holding one another in the dark and releasing a sort of catharsis that they both needed. The rumbling of the idle engine is all that marks the world outside of their arms. They both cry, and apologize, and-- and brush off one another’s apologies, and neither of them consider moving until Aziraphale takes one last breathful of Crowley’s closeness, settles his heart in his chest, and says, “My dear, take me home.” 

\--

It’s only another half hour or so from there, and Aziraphale doesn’t let go of Crowley’s hand the whole way. He’s calmed down now, if the lack of tears is anything to go by, and is content to take deep breaths and rub Crowley’s knuckles until the moment he has to unlock the bookshop’s doors.

Up until that point, Crowley keeps waiting and waiting for Aziraphale to be _angry._

_He isn’t angry,_ is the thing. He’s sad, but not angry. Crowley keeps finding himself bracing for an upset anyway, as if Aziraphale has _ever_ been angry with him. He hasn’t. The upset never comes. Crowley can’t even figure out why that’s a reaction he expected from him-- a flare of temper, a raised voice, and flailing gesticulation as Aziraphale chews him out for lying, for all the secrets, for keeping him in the dark. For putting his life in danger. 

The anger never comes, and as they cross the threshold, Crowley comes to terms with why. 

Aziraphale doesn’t need anger. He has sadness, and that fills the space where anger might reside. Where some might need the catharsis of an outburst, he doesn’t. He needs-- he needs…

Crowley stands just inside the door and wrings his hands as Aziraphale goes about turning the lights on, hanging his suit jacket up, and putting the kettle on. The moment calls back to before they were comfortable having drinks together after an outing, when Crowley would fidget and stammer by the door until he decided it was time for him to take his leave. _He’ll never invite you in,_ he remembers thinking, _you’re a demon, he wants less of you, not more._

He was wrong then, just like he’s wrong about Aziraphale’s anger now. He doesn’t need to chew Crowley out for his wrongdoings. He needs something else. 

The demon watches him putter about the backroom, doing his best to do the things he always does despite tonight’s revelation. He remembers when Aziraphale had done the unexpected and asked him in for a drink all those months ago, bridging a gap they’d both been reaching across.

He’d been brave that night. Crowley can see him reaching for something and decides it’s his turn.

Quietly, he asks Aziraphale to read to him. (He provides an out, of course-- an ‘if you need space, just say so’, an ‘I understand if you need time’. He’s so gentle, so careful.)

Aziraphale doesn’t take the out. Instead, realizing much in the same moment that that’s exactly what they both need, he prepares them both a hot cocoa with a shot of Kahlúa, snatches his worn copy of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ off of his desk, and settles them onto the couch. Crowley barely hesitates to lie his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder when he takes up the spot next to them, and by the time his cocoa is gone, Aziraphale is dozing off mid-sentence (and Crowley feels, oddly, like a sort of peace has settled over them). 

One human tucked into bed, two hours, one dissolved feeling of peace, and several ill-gotten drinks later, a body hits the door of _Basmuuth, Law Consult and Scrivener._

Basmuuth, having long grown accustomed to the various sounds of Hell, knows this isn’t usually one of them. They open their door and, without preamble or excuse, Crowley tumbles in, already talking in circles and lowering himself to the sticky laminate floor. 

“--And he was so”-- _sniff_ \--“ _sad,_ Basmuuth, I’ve never seen anything like it, it was like he was crying a river and it was because of _me._ ” Crowley is too drunk to notice, but Basmuuth feels a sleazy music manager somewhere get paid a royalty. “I can’t do it, Bas, I can’t let him go, I can’t do this. I can’t do _enough_ , and I _have_ to save him, I _have_ to. I don’t care what you want from me. I’m out of options.” 

Basmuuth sighs, pinches the bridge of their nose, and stalks over to where Crowley sits, immediately plopping down beside him. “What’re’ya talkin’ about, Crowley?”

“ _Him,”_ Crowley coughs out on a sob. Basmuuth notices then that he still has a drink, but is shaking too much to hold it properly without spilling. He gently removes said drink and places it several inches away while Crowley continues to warble. “I can’t-- he was _crying_ , and _hurting_ , and it was _all my fault._ ” He mewls his words, officially the most pathetic demon to ever exist. 

As he curls up on himself, his heavy sobs giving way to more constant, quiet weeping, Basmuuth rubs his back. “Crowley, I can’t understand you. What’s wrong?” they ask, their voice monotone with continued, professional disinterest.

Crowley breathes as he is bidden, wipes his nose on his extravagant sleeve, and lies his head on his arm. “It’s _him._ Aziraphale. Tonight I--... he…” How does one wrap it all up into only a few words? Crowley doesn’t know, and he doesn’t feel like trying, so with a huff, he gets to the point. “I love him so much, Basmuuth. We have to save him,” comes his weak white flag.

The lawyer scoffs. _Only about three months too late, idiot,_ they think, rolling their eyes. “Does this mean you’re taking my deal?” 

Another snivel from Crowley, another moment wherein he collects himself. “Yes, Basmuuth, I’m taking your deal,” he says miserably. “As much as I’d rather not.”

Basmuuth smiles knowingly, his shark-sharp teeth gleaming in the dim, fluorescent lights. He offers Crowley a hand, which is immediately scrutinized, then taken.

They shake a little too long to be comfortable, as is custom in Hell. “Good to be in business with ya’, pal.”   
  


\-- 

Somewhere in a plane inaccessible by 99.99% of beings in existence, a stack of infinitely-shuffling, pale papers reshuffles again, again, again. 

If one were able to focus on the names or dates or times on any of them (which is metaphysically impossible for the same 99.99% of beings to whom this plane is both unknown and unreachable), one would see, every now and then: _Aziraphale Fell, February 11, 7:27 pm._

This slip of paper had, in the months previous, still been too close to the bottom of the pile to be able to be seen. Now, though, it’s ever-so slowly making its way up, its date growing closer to the present.

( _‘Slowly’,_ of course, is relative. To Crowley, things could not be happening faster. To, again, the singular being who can access this plane, this milk-white desk, this ledger-stack of death-dates, the pulse of time is as slow and constant as it's always been.)

That singular being, The Custodian, pulls a slip of paper off of the desk seemingly at random. It’s not random, none of this is; much like everything else under The Custodian’s purview, it’s completely and entirely ineffable, decided by fate and carried through by its capable hands. As soon as the slip’s contents are parsed by The Custodian’s caution-orange eyes and the slip itself is passed through the mail slot of the nearby door, the room is filled by a slow and familiar whirring click.

_Click-click-click-whirrrr-click-click-- snap._

The Custodian, with their body of fog and dust from the very beginning of the universe, forged by Her hand, and their mind of infinite knowing, pulls the knob on the door. It steps through the frame, over the threshold, and onto Earth. 

It collects in the room, unknown to the humans throughout, like smoke held within glass. The smoke congeals and turns and roils and spells out the shape of a human, large and invisible. It takes the soul of the human assigned at the exact split-moment that had been spelled out on its paper slip. 

Back in the Plane of The Custodian, the slip that contains Aziraphale’s name shuffles a tiny bit closer to the surface. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOOOOO HOLY SHIT. okay. let's take some breaths, yeah?
> 
> the next two chapters (and some accompanying illustrations) are already up on [my patreon](https://patreon.com/goosetooths) and will be up here as soon as i have chapter(s) 9 (and also maybe 10) done and up on patreon as well.
> 
> go [here](https://www.instagram.com/p/CL7l6E5Fe7s/) to see some art of the boys in their Ritz outfits that i did a couple months ago when i was writing this!
> 
> you can pester me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/goosetooths) and [instagram](https://instagram.com/goosetooths)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] amaretto](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25649218) by [Arcafira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcafira/pseuds/Arcafira)




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